The University Writing Center offers a variety of resources that support JMU faculty in their different teaching, scholarly, and service efforts.
Class Visits and Workshops
UWC consultants can visit your classes at any point during the semester to coordinate guided peer review workshops or to offer topic-specific presentations and workshops tailored to your students' needs (e.g., "critical reading strategies," "revision and editing strategies," or "how to write a discussion section in an empirical article"). Use the UWC's Presentation Request Form to request a visit, and contact UWC Interim Co-Coordinator Lucy Malenke (malenklb@jmu.edu) if you have questions.
Online Writing Guides and Handouts
The Writing Center's Writing Guides and Handouts site offers organized, up-to-date lists of useful online writing resources. If you need to introduce or explain a part of the writing process, a specific genre, a challenging grammar or style concern, or discipline-specific citation styles, the UWC's Writing Guides and Handouts are a good starting place. The site is also pretty handy when you're looking for a UWC-endorsed resource to include in an email or when you need your own quick refresher course.
You can help us build the site by identifying resources you'd like to to reference. Send your "Writing Guides and Handouts" ideas, suggestions, and even specific links to UWC Interim Co-Coordinators Lucy Malenke (malenklb@jmu.edu) and Rudy Barrett (barretrl@jmu.edu), cc-ing UWC Faculty Associate Kevin Jefferson (jefferkx@jmu.edu).
University Writing Center Introductory Video
The majority of UWC first-time visitors report that they heard about the University Writing Center from a professor. In other words, JMU writers decide to enter more fully into academia's collaborative writing process because someone they respect said it was a good idea.
Please consider sharing the UWC's introductory video (<4 minutes) with your students and/or posting the URL (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5602M7B67dQ) to your course Canvas sites.
Syllabus Statement
Please consider pasting the bullet point below (last revised on 9.19.2017) into your course syllabi or Canvas resources:
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University Writing Center: Providing in-person and online writing consultations, the University Writing Center is staffed by trained peer, graduate, and faculty consultants who offer free assistance with all types of academic and non-academic writing. UWC consultants can help you identify your writing ideas and questions, narrow your focus, organize your ideas, shape your work for different purposes and audiences in different genres and disciplines, incorporate and document your sources, and develop your revision strategies. To schedule a session or to find what you need in a library of online writing resources, visit www.jmu.edu/uwc.
We look forward to working with your students. If you have a big class or are thinking about requiring that your students visit the UWC, we would love to collaborate with you ahead of time (just send an email toUWC Interim Co-Coordinators Lucy Malenke (malenklb@jmu.edu) and Rudy Barrett (barretrl@jmu.edu). Students sometimes have trouble scheduling a UWC consulting session before a deadline or due date, as there are busy peaks every semester when the UWC's online scheduler is full of orange boxes (indicating that most available consulting hours have been reserved).
Longstanding policy prevents UWC consultants from discussing individual sessions with professors. It's important that JMU writers feel confident in sharing their writing ideas and concerns outside of the evaluative classroom learning space.
Extra Credit Policy (and/or how your students can verify for you that they visited the UWC)
Students who sign up for and then benefit from a first UWC session often return for second and subsequent sessions, either later in the semester or later in their academic careers. If you would like to offer extra credit for a UWC visit, feel free to paste in/adapt the language below for your course syllabi or Canvas resources:
Extra Credit
I will add 5 percentage points to any paper if you visit the University Writing Center in advance of the due date, under the following conditions.
- You must schedule your UWC session at least two days before the paper's due date. You are welcome to schedule your session any time after the paper is assigned, but I will not count any session that you schedule the day before the paper is due (and certainly not on the due date itself).
- You must fully participate in the session: you should actively engage in the conversation about your draft and should take notes and/or make edits. If your technology permits it, you should use your video and audio for your online sessions. Your session must take at least 30 minutes, but you should try to sign up for an hour (which will allow for a ~45-minute session).
- For in-person sessions, ask your consultant to complete one of the UWC's hard copy proof-of-visit forms. For online sessions, take a screenshot of your session that includes the time, date, and evidence that you participated. One way to do this is to ask your consultant to verify the session in the chat window. Your consultant will type a sentence like this: “I certify that Lydia Ko participated in a 40-minute UWC consultation on May 23, 2023."
Composing in Digital Environments
JMU Digital Communication Consulting has moved to the University Writing Center.
- If you or your students are looking for digital storytelling, e-Portfolios, and personal branding resources, the UWC's "Writing Guides and Handouts" site offers links to DigiComm pages.
- To request a class presentation or workshop focused on digital projects, contact Graduate Assistant Julie Short at shortjf@dukes.jmu.edu.
- Students and faculty are welcome to sign up for face-to-face sessions in the UWC for help on their digital projects. LauraJean Logue is listed on the UWC appointment scheduler as digital specialists, and other UWC consultants can work with you and your students on the rhetorical considerations that come with composing in digital environments.
Individualized Writing Consultations
We welcome faculty to take advantage of the same individualized consultation services that we offer to students. You can make an appointment through our online scheduler.
Teaching Consultations
Writing Center consultants can assist faculty who teach writing in any discipline with assignment design and troubleshooting, evaluation techniques, and classroom strategies for enhancing student performance on written assignments. Useful help in providing effective essay feedback to students is available here, and you can contact UWC Interim Co-Coordinators Lucy Malenke (malenklb@jmu.edu) and Rudy Barrett (barretrl@jmu.edu) for additional information.
Planning Peer Review
Looking to implement peer review effectively into your courses (no matter your discipline)? Want researched step-by-step advice that offers help with planning, delivering, and assessing? Check out our 5-part series:
- Part 1: The Benefits and Drawbacks of Peer Review
- Part 2: Planning the Peer Review
- Part 3: Preparing Students for Peer Review
- Part 4: Running a Peer Review
- Part 5: Encouraging Revision and Assessing Peer Review
Designing Effective Assignments
Many professors write and assign assignments in isolation, and then grade in isolation. The UWC can't help you with the grading, but we can help if you want to workshop a prompt, or if you want to run a writing assignment past a trained set of consultant eyes. UWC undergraduate, graduate, and faculty consultants see a lot of prompts; we read them, we respond to them, and we write them. We know what makes sense to JMU writers when it comes to assignments, calendars, and expectations, and we can offer useful feedback.
You can schedule a one-to-one consultation focused on writing assignments by writing UWC Interim Co-Coordinators Lucy Malenke (malenklb@jmu.edu) and Rudy Barrett (barretrl@jmu.edu). Or you can jump into the UWC scheduler to make an appointment with one of our other UWC consultants.
Guidelines for designing and integrating collaborative writing projects
Assignment Design Guidelines (download)
A four-part UWC-created video series dramatizing potential problems and opportunities with assignments:
Course-Embedded Consultant Program
The Course-Embedded Consultant Program pairs advanced UWC undergraduate writing consultants with courses in a variety of disciplines. In these courses, embedded consultants help lead writing workshops, deliver mini-lessons, hold individual student conferences, and collaborate on assignment design. Learn more about hosting an embedded consultant in one of your courses here and contact UWC Interim Co-Coordinator Rudy Barrett (barretrl@jmu.edu) with any questions.
