Category: Vol. 4 Summer 2023

The Voyage Out and The Voyage Home: Learning to trust the freewriting process in writing appointments

~ CWCA/ACCR

Vol. 4, No. 4 (Summer 2023)

Christin Wright-Taylor, Manager, Writing Services, Wilfrid Laurier University

This term, I seem to be meeting with more students who struggle to start the writing process. I tallied my writing appointments so far and found that 32% of them have been dedicated to helping the student generate writing for their assignments. For me, this has been an increase over previous terms. I’ve enjoyed these appointments, but I’ve also found myself hesitating on the precipice of a guided freewriting prompt, wondering: Do these work?

I can report that, yes, they do!

However, the experience of guiding my students through this formative, messy, unruly part of writing has made me reflect on what I often forget about the act of writing: it requires trust. Trust in me as the writing consultant, and both our trust in the process.

Continue reading “The Voyage Out and The Voyage Home: Learning to trust the freewriting process in writing appointments” →

Navigating the push and the pull: ‘Negotiating’ doctoral writing

~ CWCA/ACCR

Vol. 4, No. 2 (Summer 2023)

Brittany (Britt) Amell is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Digital Humanities Hub at the University of London. Her research focuses on critical, collaborative, and reparative engagements with unconventional scholarship, non-traditional knowledge production, and writing and genre studies. She can be reached at BrittanyAmell @ Cmail.Carleton.ca

As a social practice, the doctoral dissertation has been characterized as the outcome of complex negotiations that surround the entire dissertation process (Paltridge et al., 2012). Here, the word, negotiation, often implies a mutually beneficial agreement arising between two or more parties as a result of dialogue. However, the experiences of doctoral writers often reflect a different reality, one where choices are constrained and affordances are limited. Other factors, such as power differentials and assessment conditions, can also play a significant role in shaping the local contexts in which doctoral students write. Few doctoral writers, for instance, wish to risk failure when it comes to the assessment or examination of their dissertations. Given this, it is important to reflect critically on usages of negotiation that imply a natural smoothness or ease accompanies the dissertation writing cycle. Continue reading “Navigating the push and the pull: ‘Negotiating’ doctoral writing” →

The Pandemic, GenAI, & the Return to Handwritten, In-Person, Timed, and Invigilated Exams: Causes, Context, and the Perpetuation of Ableism (Part 1 of 2)

~ CWCA/ACCR

Vol. 4, No. 3 (Summer 2023)

Liv Marken, Contributing Editor, CWCR/RCCR

Part two, The Pandemic, GenAI, & the Return to Handwritten, In-Person, Timed Exams: A Critical Examination and Guidance for Writing Centre Support, is here. CWCR/RCCR Editor

When post-secondary institutions resumed in-person classes this year, many instructors and programs brought back handwritten, in-person, timed, and invigilated examinations (Hoyle, 2023; McLoughlin, 2023). This return to tradition was partly spurred by anxieties around the increase in student cheating during the remote phase of the pandemic (Bilen, Matros & Matros, 2021; Eaton, et al., 2023; Lancaster & Cortolan, 2023; Noorbehbahani, Mohammadi, & Aminazadeh 2022; Peters, 2023, Reed, 2023). Then, with OpenAI’s November 30, 2022 release of the artificial intelligence text generator, ChatGPT, anxieties about cheating escalated rapidly (Heidt, 2023). The AI language model’s ability to quickly generate natural-sounding text (in addition to its abilities in language tasks such as translation, summarization, and question answering) were exciting but also alarming (Cotton, Cotton, & Shipway, 2023; Susnjak, 2022), Since its release, ChatGPT’s steady improvement, as well as the proliferation of similar AI writing tools, have led to newly intensified anxieties around maintaining academic integrity (Cotton, Cotton, & Shipway, 2023; Susnjak, 2022).  AI detectors, which may seem like a silver bullet to prevent and catch plagiarism, have been shown to make false accusations (Drapkin, 2023) and show bias against non-native English speakers (Liang et al., 2023). OpenAI found that their own detection tool, AI Classifier, was just not effective at catching cheating, leading the company to “quietly” shut it down (Nelson, 2023): “As of July 20, 2023, the AI classifier is no longer available due to its low rate of accuracy” (OpenAI, 2023). With pandemic and generative AI cheating concerns, and no easy solutions, post-secondary institutions are in is a race against the clock to redesign assessment before the fall semester (Fowler, 2023; Heidt, 2023; Hubbard, 2023). Continue reading “The Pandemic, GenAI, & the Return to Handwritten, In-Person, Timed, and Invigilated Exams: Causes, Context, and the Perpetuation of Ableism (Part 1 of 2)” →

Precarity and pluckiness: A message from in-coming CWCA/ACCR President, Stevie Bell

~ CWCA/ACCR

Vol. 4, No. 1 (Summer 2023)

Stevie Bell, President, CWCA/ACCR

Thanks to all for the warm welcome to the CWCA/ACCR’s presidency. I come to this position with humility, a readiness to serve the Canadian community of writing centre professionals, and immense gratitude for  the contributions of my fellow Board members. This community is near and dear to my heart. I’ve grown up in writing centres, starting my career as a peer tutor at Wilfrid Laurier’s Writing Centre back in 2004  before becoming an instructor at the University of Waterloo’s Writing Lab and English Language Proficiency Exam program as a graduate student. When I graduated from UW with a dissertation project centered on how student writers learn to engage with sources (often despite their course directors’ assignment designs and their institution’s policing of academic honesty), I was privileged to join the world of writing centres with some permanence at York University’s Writing Department. I attended the CWCA/ACCR’s first independent conference in Victoria and was eager to get involved a few years later in a leadership capacity as Digital Media Chair. Since then, I have committed countless evenings to this amazing organization working in service to my friends and colleagues across Canada. Continue reading “Precarity and pluckiness: A message from in-coming CWCA/ACCR President, Stevie Bell” →