Writing Center Services for Faculty
The Writing Center works to foster a vibrant writing community as an indispensable part of intellectual life at Upper Iowa University by providing a number of services for faculty and staff.
Services for Online and Center Faculty
We understand that often instructors and students working remotely may feel as though they are doing so on an island. Therefore, the Writing Center strives to act as a hub – a community for all things writing-related at Upper Iowa University – maintaining a varied and visible web presence, providing outreach, service and support for online and distance learning through online services, social media and a growing library of writing resources.
Email Tutoring Service
The Writing Center offers writing consultations for all online and center students via our Email Tutoring Service. This service is designed to give students a personal and productive e-tutoring experience: connecting them one-on-one with our trained writing consultants, who provide detailed feedback for any writing project.
Timeline
The email tutoring process is asynchronous, meaning that it does not require the student to set an appointment at a specific time. Instead, we respond to messages strictly in the order in which they are received. Typically, students can expect a response within 48 hours on business days (this timeline is approximate, and not guaranteed during busy periods such as midterm and finals weeks). For these reasons, we recommend that if you wish for your students to complete an email tutoring session you encourage them to do so as early in the process as possible, to prevent any deadline complications.
Information & Criteria
In order for us to provide the most useful and accurate feedback, we ask students to include any assignment information, criteria, or feedback they have already received, as well as a list of their top three (or more) pressing concerns about the writing sample. This information is used strictly to help consultants better understand the elements of and desired outcomes for a writing project, and gauge where in the process the writer’s work currently falls.
Feedback Form
All Writing Center email tutoring responses are provided as a Consultation Letter, in Microsoft Word document format. In the interest of encouraging students to view our feedback as a learning tool (not a proofreading or editing service) we do not include comments or track changes within the body of the student’s work.
Resources
Whenever possible, writing consultants are encouraged to connect students with additional resources. These may include digital handouts about specific writing-related topics, or links to websites and further research.
Grammar Checkers
When working with students who matriculate primarily online, we are often faced with questions about “grammar checkers” and “citation software”. Though we do not necessarily discourage students from using these programs, we do emphasize their fallibility, and the value in seeking feedback from a human instead of (or in addition to) an algorithm.