Dear colleagues,
In discussions with the boards of my faculty and university I am often confronted with questions about the effectiveness of the services that writing centers provide. Especially the effectiveness of the tutoring that is offered by (more) experienced student tutors is called into question. How do writing tutors affect student writers' knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, or competencies in writing and to what extent does this impact on their study success, progress, course completion, program costs, et cetera? The literature, as far as I can see, offers little or no substantial evidence. What becomes abundantly clear from the available literature, is the inherent difficulty of studying writing center effectiveness. This latter observation can be and often is the starting point for an answer to those who question the need for writing centers, but for skeptical minds such answers obviously are far from convincing. Perhaps I missed out studies that do address writing center effectiveness in a systematic and methodologically rigorous fashion. If so, I would be very grateful to anyone who helps me to identify such work.
Best wishes,
Kees de Glopper
Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen
|