New Campaign to Promote Registration

Thanks to Ms. Miller, we launched our flier campaign to encourage students at UM-Tupelo to register for our online site and to schedule appointments at the online calendar. Elvis's "It's Now or Never" provides the theme for the fliers along with tear-off information on the website. We've had a lot of success with the tear-off fliers, and other groups on campus have even started imitating our flier formats. Next week we'll add email blasts to students and faculty to encourage registration.

What else do you think we could do to encourage student writers to use our online system?

Marketing Ideas

I think that we've been doing a great job drawing students into the WC by visiting the English classes. We've introduced ourselves to both Ole Miss and NWCC English classes. The support and enthusiasm from the instructors really helped show how much of an impact that the WC can have. In addition to our signs that are posted in the commons area, I think that we should create fliers with our hours of operation and room number. These fliers need to be posted on all three floors. This will draw even more much-needed attention. The students that have been utilizing the center have become regulars. With time, more students will start visiting the WC.

Response to "Promoting Access in Open Distance Learning"

Written by Mirriam Lephalala and Cathy Pienaar, this article focuses on distance learning institutions and widening student involvement in South Africa. One of the key points about the article is that writing centers have become an “integral part of learner support in higher education”. Moreover, the article talks at length about the University of South Africa and its striving agenda for widening community access. The article goes on to reveal some of the answers to reoccurring questions concerning diversity among the UNISA (University of South Africa) student population. For example, one of the questions was what does widening student participation mean? This involves a two phase process: firstly, an increasing number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds should be accepted and secondly there should be a increase in diverse learning for these students.
While diversity was one key point in this article, the introduction of a writing center at UNISA was another. It was recognized that the University was failing at supplying academic student support structures. Students with diverse backgrounds need support structures that can be overtly provided, because many of the students:
• Are first generation university entrants in their families and have little or no knowledge of what university education entails
• Speak English as a second or third language
• Have limited access to the financial, material and emotional support necessary for university success
The article states that by 2003 it became obvious that there was an urgent need to improve these Student Structures and to establish a writing center, which they did. The first services were offered to students in September of 2003 and included:
• Face to face tutoring where students were assisted with problems related to all stages of the writing process, from brainstorming for ideas to revising and editing final drafts
• Regular workshops that focused on a variety of topics, such as business writing skills and strategies for improving written drafts
• The START program, which consists of a variety of self-study reading comprehension worksheets
• The “Reading Excellence” computer program to improve reading skills
In 2006 the article states that the writing center changed its name to the UNISA Academic Literacies Center as the number of services offered by the center was increased. Currently, it offers reading, writing, quantitative literacy as well as information literacy services. The article goes on say that there are currently 18 UNISA writing centers spread throughout South Africa.
The conclusion of this article further reiterates the importance of writing centers becoming an “essential part of distance educations like UNISA”. IT goes on to state that a writing center should no longer be regarded as a service that is complementary to the course content, focusing only on giving students the necessary assistance to understand the course content. The improved and upgraded UNISA Academic Literacies Center aims to “assist all learners to achieve a high quality of learning, and the services are available to all learners at any stage of the learning process”.
I really liked this article and the simplistic ways it dealt with complex issues such as diversity and prosperous centers of writing and learning.

WC idea

A way for someone to become good at something is if they are interested in it and practice. So to become better writers, students must write. Not only write but also read..They may not be interested in what their teachers have assigned them to write about..but what if they wrote (or read) about something that they are interested in?

My idea is : what if every month or so we had a writing-marathon where students (ones who have registered with the writing center) can come and ..just read or write! We can have different themes each meet (ex :poetry,quotes,novels,fiction, nonfiction) We could make the WC like a cozy coffee house atmosphere and possibly similar to what we are doing for the National Novel writing for November. But since it's only for November-we should have this monthly. This could even be like a book club! This would help spread the word about the WC and get students involved . It could possibly help improve students' writing skills.

Script

Let's not forget to add a line where the student says, "I need to make an appointment at the WC" and then uses the online system to do that...