Monday, January 28, 2013

Writing Center opens for Spring 2013

The Writing Center is up and running and again. This semester we have new undergraduate workshops and, for the first time, graduate workshops. We are trying to zero in on the skills that students need most to write successfully at the university. It's a moving target! To see what we've latched onto this time, visit our workshops page at our website.

We had all-day training for all campus tutors on Saturday, January 26.  I ran this along with my colleagues Maureen Dupont, who runs the Math Lab, and Hilary Comerchero, who runs the Language Learning Center.  In keeping with my ongoing efforts, I again stressed the importance of minimalist tutoring--the idea that less is more.  And, in addition, that more is actually less.  We looked at research by Michelene Chi and her colleagues that indicates that tutees do as well with tutors who are instructed to explain less as with tutors who explain a lot--which is, of course, our natural predisposition as tutors.  In fact, tutees show deeper learning (defined as the ability to transfer learning to new contexts and make inferences) when there is almost no explanation.  The reason for this is that self-explanation seems to lead to the deepest learning.  Tutors, accordingly, should interact with tutees in a way that prompts these self-explanations.  Explanations coming from us tend to interfere with that process.

No comments:

Post a Comment