The Writing Centre’s mission is to offer free, high-quality tuition in academic writing to all undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in improving their writing skills. They offer one-to-one tuition and a range of workshops/seminars.
Academic integration/belongingTraining | Workshop | On campus | Online & in person (hybrid)
Time lineWhat is the main idea or gist?
What does this initiative/support/project look like?
The Writing Centre started as a pilot initiative but is now an integrated service within the university, based in a central location, within the library.
The Writing Centre’s mission is to offer free, high-quality tuition in academic writing to all undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in improving their writing skills.
They offer one-to-one tuition and a range of workshops/seminars. Writing tutors are experienced at assessing written work and giving constructive feedback, encouraging, friendly and non-judgemental, and the sessions are student-centred, and inquiry driven.
They strive to “ensure that students are helped to communicate, structure and present their knowledge and ideas in a written format, and that their expertise and critical thinking skills are not diminished by either fear of, or difficulties with, aspects of the writing process.”
The service is free.
Students can book 50-minute or 30-minute sessions (check timetable for opening times).
Students can also drop in without an appointment.
Students can get one to one support from the Writing Centre’s tutors or attend workshops on a variety of topics. See below as examples of workshops the Writing Centre has offered so far:
New workshops are frequently introduced and are advertised on Facebook, Twitter, and on the website. Some popular workshops have been recorded and are available to view on our website. These videos are on YouTube and can be viewed by anyone. For example, our video on How to Write a Literature Review has more than 330,000 views.
Support is offered online or in person.
The writing centre has also developed specific modules on academic writing for specific programmes, and these modules are integrated into student’s academic timetable (currently, these are writing modules for Arts and Humanities students, for Access students, and for Science Postgraduate students). The Manager has also co-created a writing module for a separate program (department of English), and was on the panel for development of a new core writing module (department of Nursing).
The writing centre offers 94 slots of student support per week and the centre is open for the academic year and closes in April. However, since the summer 2023, the Centre has piloted online summer sessions (4 weeks over June/July), to support Master students while they are writing up their theses. It is hoped that these summer sessions will become a permanent service in the future.
During the summer the Writing Centre runs an outreach programme for DEIS schools – DEIS stands for Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools, the DEIS programme is the Department of Education’s main policy initiative to respond to educational disadvantage. The DEIS programme focuses on targeting additional resources to those schools included in the programme to ensure every child has an equal opportunity to achieve their potential. The DEIS Schools Project – ‘Writing as Practice, Writing as a Skill, Writing as a Process’.
This project is promoted amongst English Teachers in DEIS schools: usually, 3-5 schools are invited to the Writing Centre, and each school brings up to 30 5th year students to the UCD campus for one day, where they get to gain skills and insight into academic writing, hear about what it is like to study in UCD and get a tour. The project is about exposing students to university and getting them to see it as a possibility.
Some of the inspiration for the writing centre comes from US where universities have had well established Writing Centres for many years.
The promotion and language around the Writing Centre is very important – the name ‘Writing Support Centre’ was purposefully not used as we do not want the writing centre to be seen purely as a remedial service; instead, it is a resource for all students who might need writing tips or want an experienced writer to advise them on their writing skills or writing style. The aim is to promote the value and interest in writing. We have many PhD and postgrad students who access the service as well. *(However, by choosing the name UCD Writing Centre, we have encountered queries about creative writing, and are followed on social media by a number of creative writing centres or writers, and by many publishing houses. Therefore, we would advise the use of ‘academic writing centre’ to anyone thinking of opening the writing centre in their institution. We followed the American model, however the institutions and students in the US are familiar with writing centres and the word ‘academic’ is probably obsolete in the names of their centres.
What are the goals?
We offer 94 individual writing appointments a week, which any student can avail of. Our goals are to help students: feel supported during their studies; understand the conventions and rules of academic writing; transition more easily from secondary school to university; become independent and confident writers; see the value in their writing and to see writing as a transferable skill; identify their strengths and weaknesses as writers, and help them develop practical strategies for writing more confidently and effectively.
How are students involved?
| We regularly take feedback from students through surveys and by asking students to complete feedback forms after workshops.
The feedback influences how we deliver the service; for example, we have changed the opening hours, and the times that our workshops are delivered based on this feedback, we have also introduced name tags for our tutors and generally our workshop topics are generated from student feedback or student needs. The Centre currently has 9 tutors who are generally UCD PhD students or post PhD students. They deliver one to one support, design and deliver workshops/seminars, and assist in module development. |
What underlying constructs or ideas inspired the design?
| This is the UCD Writing Centre website: https://www.ucd.ie/writingcentre/
This Guide to Setting up a Writing Centre, from Maynooth University in Ireland was very helpful for us: https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/6656/1/Writing%20Centre%20Set%20Up.pdf The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors by L. Ryan and L. Zimmerelli is an essential book on writing centre tutoring principles and strategies. There are some seminal articles, good for understanding the writing centre work and the principles behind writing centre tutoring, such as The Idea of a Writing Centre: https://www.evergreen.edu/sites/default/files/writingcenter/docs/cv/North_TheIdeaofaWritingCenter.pdf Minimalist Tutoring: Making Students Do All the Work – https://clas.sa.ucsb.edu/docs/default-source/resources-writing/minimalist-tutoring.pdf?sfvrsn=3e9d2bfb_0
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What the success criteria and the points of attention?
The Writing Centre strives to build skills around writing beyond just college assignments but to get students to recognize the value of good writing skills and to recognise these skills as transferrable.
Students who access the service have anecdotally noted that they haven’t been instructed how to write for academic purposes, how to structure their assignments, develop arguments, write analytically, and pay attention to their writing on sentence level. Therefore, university-wide instruction of academic writing to all new students is needed and would be ideal.
What makes this initiative successful: the Centre is embedded within the University support structures and cooperates with other support units; it receives support and recommendations from Schools and lecturers; students report increased confidence in their writing ability; module curriculum doesn’t allow time for writing instruction so lecturers have a place to which they can refer students; the Centre employs experienced tutors, who develop a good rapport with students as fellow writers; the Centre is focused on student success and is very student-centered; the Centre is centrally located on the campus.
(How) does the effectiveness get tracked?
It is hard to measure the precise effectiveness of it e.g., was the Writing Centre the direct reason for improving a student’s GPA or what role it plays in student retention.
However, the student feedback is very positive. When asked if they feel more confident about approaching their assignments after the Writing Centre session, about 98% of students constantly answer ‘yes’. In the annual survey, the students also indicate that they have improved grades after accessing the service. They provide examples of their grades going up, but this is something that has been hard to measure as there could be several variables that impact a student’s grade.
strongly agree
(How) is this initiative/support/project evaluated?
Yes – it has not been externally evaluated but we do get regular feedback from students, which influences how we deliver the service and what workshops we cover.
We send a survey once a year and we get feedback on a regular basis, through hardcopy Feedback Sheets after individual appointments, through chats with students, or via email.
We have adapted our service based on feedback – for example by extending opening times, introducing certain workshop topics, offering longer workshops, making workshops more exercise-based, developing certain handouts, etc. Furthermore, feedback is discussed at staff meetings as part of our staff
development at the end of every semester, where we collectively discuss possible solutions to student questions or suggestions.
The Writing Centre submits an annual report to the registrar on the impact of the service.
Lecturers also sometimes provide informal feedback.
There are 37 different Schools (departments) in UCD. Evidence suggests that the Centre is most often used by students in the Schools of English, Nursing, Law, Business, Social Science, and History but it is open for all students. Evidence also shows that students from all 37 schools use the Centre every year.
How is it communicated and advertised?
What is the current and ideal timing and duration?
The service runs in conjunction with the academic year. Below are the opening hours:
Mon – 10a.m. to 7p.m. (Closed for lunch 1 – 2 p.m.)
Tues/Wed/Thurs – 10a.m. to 4p.m. (Closed for lunch 1 – 2 p.m.)
Fri – 10 to 2p.m.
Workshops/seminars are generally run at lunchtime or at 5 or 6p.m. in the evening. The same workshop is presented both in person and online.
During regular ‘school’ hours.
What resources are needed to run this initiative?
Staff – you need a designated staff member to co-ordinate the service, recruit and train the tutors, manage the budget, the booking system, the schedule, reporting, manage the space and resources, social media accounts, student feedback, and the administrative work.
Manager – Manager is in charge
Tutors – We currently have 9 tutors but will employ 1 or two additional tutors next semester. Ideally, the tutors are not asked to cover more than two or three hours in a row because one-on-one sessions can get repetitive and intense (students may come to the writing centre upset, overwhelmed, under pressure, lacking confidence etc.). It is important that the tutors are trained properly. We have composed a Writing Instructor Manual for tutors, to which they can refer whenever they need.
A designated space is very important – the writing centre is in a prime location, in the main library, and it is is designed to be conducive to learning, welcoming, and accessible to all students. We also use certain colours as part of our branding (this is evident in our furniture, the posters and announcements in our room, pull up banners, and our promo materials). When designing the space, we have asked for easily movable and foldable furniture – this way the room can be used for one-on-one sessions, but could easily be transformed into a workshop room, or a room used for special events.
Promo – we have developed posters, bookmarks, flyers, as well as plasma screen slides that are put up around the university.
There are many other excellent writing centres in the US, including Northwestern University, The Writing Place: https://www.writing.northwestern.edu/services/
There is also the EWCA, which is the European Writing Centres Association, established with the goal “to integrate universities in Europe into a framework for exchanging ideas and establishing an infrastructure for Writing Centre goals and objectives”. They promote collaboration between different writing centres, hold a biennial conference, link writing centre practitioners, and advocate for the significance and recognition of writing centres and their work in Europe and beyond. Their website is: https://europeanwritingcenters.eu/ and interested writing centre practitioners are welcome to join.
Yes, a Writing Centre could be introduced in another university setting. They exist in most American Universities and in some European Universities. These institutions, however, need to recognize the need for the writing centre and must be willing to allocate the budget for it. Additionally, it is sometimes difficult to decide what department the centre would fall under; therefore, very often writing centres are developed as a part of an already existing Student Learning Centre or similar support/advisory units.
Some tutors have a Universal Design badge/certificate, and others are encouraged to apply for it. We have had guests from our Access department talk to the tutors about UDL and we implement the principles in creation of our slides, handouts, and the way we deliver workshops and our sessions.