Category: Vol 3 Fall 2021

Response from Studiosity to Friends don’t let friends Studiosity (without reading the fine print)

~ Brian Hotson

CWCR/RCCR recently published a post, Friends don’t let friends Studiosity (without reading the fine print) (Vol. 4 No. 1 (Fall 2022)).

Professor Judyth Sachs, Academic Advisory Board Member & Chief Academic Officer at Studiosity, contacted the editor with a reply. Here is the content of that reply in the original.

Professor Judyth Sachs
Chief Academic Officer, Studiosity

Response to Holston and Bell (2022)

Students lie at the heart of university life and supporting their success is something we can all agree on. This support can take many forms. What form this takes is often contested, provides the basis for rigorous debate and is part and parcel of the academic zeitgeist. However, these debates need to be accurate, objective and evidence based. It is on these assumptions that, as Chief Academic Officer at Studiosity, I wish to set the record straight about Studiosity as a company, and our commitment to supporting students to be successful in their studies. However, before I do this, I want to make the following observations based on my experience as a senior academic leader and manager at two large research-intensive universities in Australia (University of Sydney as PVC Learning and Teaching and Provost at Macquarie University) where Student support came under my remit.

Continue reading “Response from Studiosity to Friends don’t let friends Studiosity (without reading the fine print)” →

Creating writing centres in neocolonialism

~ Brian Hotson

Vol. 3 No. 4 (Fall 2021)

Brian Hotson, Editor, CWCR/RCCR
Stevie Bell, Associate Professor, York University
Guest editor: Lauren Mackenzie

In 2008, the then CWCA/ACCR president participated in “setting up of the first writing centre” in India (Holock, 2009, p. 6) through the University of Ottawa. In a piece in the 2009 CWCA/ACCR Newsletter, Writing into India: Setting up the first Writing Centre in the country, Holock describes his experience at Parvatibai Chowgule College of Arts and Science in Gogol, Goa, India in a travel diary style recounting,

On Friday, June 27, 2008, we step off of our fifteen-hour flight in Mumbai, my boss and I, and immediately feel the weight of our endeavour. It is not only the heat and thickness of the air, but the realization that we have finally arrived to start work on Monday, in a country and an educational system that neither of us have ever been exposed to. (Holock, 2009, p. 6)

Continue reading “Creating writing centres in neocolonialism” →

Regional Writing Centre Associations in Canada: Spotlight on the Alberta Writing Centres Association

An image of Alberta Wild Roses
~ Brian Hotson

Vol. 3, No. 3 (Fall 2021)

An interview with Sarah-Jean Watt, Athabasca University Write Site Coordinator, and AWCA contact

Liv Marken, Contributing Editor, CWCR/RCCR

Liv: Could you please explain for our readers what the Alberta Writing Centres Association is and what it does? How is it different from the Campus Alberta Writing Network (CAWS)?

Sarah-Jean: The AWCA began as an informal connection between institutions that participated in eTutor Alberta, an online tutoring service modelled on BC’s WriteAway. eTutor Alberta was formed in 2014 as a consortium of institutions, each of which lent a certain number of tutor hours per week to the service. Students from these institutions could submit written assignment drafts through an online system and receive feedback from a writing tutor. Helping us to build the system was the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium, which shared its code. Continue reading “Regional Writing Centre Associations in Canada: Spotlight on the Alberta Writing Centres Association” →

If you could say anything to faculty about academic integrity…

~ Brian Hotson

Vol. 3, No. 2 (Fall 2021)

Stephanie Bell, Associate Professor, York University Writing Centre; co-founder, CWCR/RCCR

A clear-cut strategy for undermining the writing centre’s relationship with student writers is to become reporters, adjudicators, or punishers of plagiarism and cheating (Bell, 2018).

In its heavy-handed discourse around academic dishonesty, the institution draws a divide between itself and students. Students arrive on campuses to find themselves positioned as likely criminals, and their work is policed by AI that scans it for infractions. Ironically, the institution’s academic dishonesty rhetoric can so undermine the institution-student relationship that it fosters academically dishonest student behaviour (see Strayhorn, 2012). To fulfill their missions, writing centres must carefully navigate the issue of academic dishonesty and the institution-student divide it constructs. Continue reading “If you could say anything to faculty about academic integrity…” →

A Short History of CWCA/ACCR: Fifteen years on

~ Brian Hotson

Vol. 3, No. 1 (Fall 2021)

Brian Hotson, CWCR/RCCR Editor

Introduction

Volume 1, Issue 1 Halifax Gazette, March 23, 1752

Although writing centres in Canada date to the mid-1960s (See Table 1) (Proctor, 2011, p. 418; Bromley, 2017, p. 35), writing tutoring and writing instruction, of course, didn’t begin with the first writing centres. Writing instruction has a progenitor dating to the first European colonizers in what is now called Canada (Halifax Gazette, 1752). Because the Canadian writing centre field is young, many of the key founders and figures in its development continue to add to its literature and practice. These writing centre practitioners in the past thirty years have created a significant body of work, including publications, repositories of information, modes of practice, national and regional associations and conferences, and proactive advocacy and social justice work. While there have been times in the past where shifts in writing centres in Canada have caused worries about centre funding and importance, writing centres will not disappear from  Canada’s  education field. In fact, writing centres will continue to grow in importance, as writing centres Continue reading “A Short History of CWCA/ACCR: Fifteen years on” →