New York Institute of Technology Old Westbury Department of English

Memorandum

To: Dr. Elaine Brown, Chair

From: Dr. Amanda Golden, Writing Center Coordinator

Subject: Writing Center Fall 2016 and Spring 2017 Assessment Report

Date: September 6, 2017

cc: L. Lazarus

Introduction As part of NYIT’s commitment to curricular assessment, the Writing Coordinator collected data from forms that both students and tutors completed during each session in the Writing Center. The purpose of this report is to summarize the assessment process, present assessment data for the Old Westbury Campus, discuss the significance of the data collected, and outline specific actions that the Writing Center plans to take in order to address the conclusions and recommendations gathered from analyzing the assessment data. Writing Center Outcomes The Writing Center seeks to accomplish the following for the NYIT academic community:

• To equip students and other clients to apply what they learned in the session. • To serve students from across the campus, from all majors and programs. • To provide writing instruction and help for writing assignments in the Discovery Core

courses. • To provide writing instruction and help for writing assignments in the various foundation

of writing courses. • To provide a satisfactory tutorial session in which students get constructive feedback that

helps them succeed academically. • To help clients at any stage of writing, from early invention, to planning, to drafting, to

revising, and to editing. Please note that this report pertains to the Old Westbury English Department Writing Center only. The Manhattan Writing Coordinator and Department Chair should be consulted to discuss their own assessment data and planned courses of action. Assessment Process Overview Using WCONLINE, the Writing Coordinator set up Student Registration and Appointment Sign Up forms completed by students prior to each tutoring session in addition to Client Report forms

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completed by tutors following each session. These forms are based on the previous printed tutorial forms used in the Old Westbury English Department Writing Center. WCONLINE generated a system statistics report from the data. Student Registration Telephone number: Standing: [choice: freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, graduate student, staff] Graduation Year: [choice: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, N/A] First or Home Language: [choice: English, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, other] Major: Student ID: Appointment Sign Up Name of the instructor giving the assignment (Type NA if no instructor). Course where the assignment is due (Type NA if no course): Have you been to the writing center before? [choice: yes, no, not sure] What brings you to the writing center today? [choice: proofreading, idea creation, revision, grammar issues, professor required] What is your major? Client Report Form (Completed by Tutors) Type of coursework for assignment or writing task: [choice of courses] Is this student ESL? [choice: yes, no, unsure] Has the student done an assignment like this before? [choice: yes, no, unsure] Where is the student in the writing process? [choice: beginning, middle, end] When is the assignment due? [choice: today, tomorrow, next few days, next week] What issues did you discuss during this session? [choice of issues] Tutorial strategies used: [choice of strategies] Please summarize this tutoring session: [text box]

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Assessment Data for 2016-2017 Figure 1

Figure 2 Student Majors

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Figure 3

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Figure 9

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From Tutor Reports Figure 10

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Figure 11

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Discussion of the Data In the fall of 2016, the Writing Center began using WCONLINE (https://mywconline.com/) for student sign-in, appointment scheduling, tutor reporting, online consultations, and collection of data. We had 361 appointments (including 42 held online) this year, which is a significant increase over last year’s total of 198 (total number of reports completed by tutors) (Figure 1). The majority of students we see are undergraduates, but we also had the opportunity to hold 48 appointments graduate students, including 15 with students from physical therapy (Figure 2). Of this year’s appointments, 120 students visited once, and 56 returned, with 6 students visiting 10 or more times (Figure 4). When signing up for an appointment, 202 students indicated that they had visited the Writing Center before, the number suggesting that some visits had been during past years (Figure 9). Tutors assisted speakers of a wide range of languages, from the 19 appointments with students whose first language is Arabic to the 50 appointments with students whose first language is Chinese and 57 appointments with students whose first language is Spanish (Figure 8). Changes this year included a satellite tutor in the library on Thursdays during the spring term, which proved to be our most popular day, with 101 student appointments over the course of the year (Figure 5). Tutoring during the review period before finals this year also meant that we held additional 17 appointments, 10 of which were with students for which Chinese is their first or home language. The most common concerns of students when signing up for appointments were proofreading and grammar. We also had significant numbers of students interested in revision, rewriting, and idea creation, aspects of the writing process that can help students in their work throughout the curriculum (Figure 9). In tutors’ reports, grammar and mechanics remain central concerns during tutoring sessions, but substantial time was also devoted to helping students with content development, idea creation, sentence structure, overall clarity, and organization (Figure 10). Among tutors’ frequently used strategies, reading aloud, discussing the essay’s contents, and having students make corrections are all strong ways of helping students to strengthen their work (Figure 11). Reviewing the assignment and reflecting on the tutoring session are also effective for clarity and reinforcing what students have learned.

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Recommended Courses of Action In the fall, we will begin using Student Success Collaborative software for sign in, appointment scheduling, and data collection. For online consultations, we will use a combination of text chat and video from Zoom and text editing from Google Docs for discussion and engagement with documents by tutor and student. The Writing Center’s graduate student assistant will help to train the tutors and send reminders about the new procedures to students. We will also hold longer appointment sessions, following the Manhattan campus’s example of thirty-minute appointments. Additional outreach, which has included a presentation to parents and students at first-year orientation and will include a workshop for architecture students, will help encourage students to seek further tutoring in the Writing Center. While we had students visiting for business writing assignments and others apart from foundations of college composition or core courses this year, including one student who signed up for assistance in proofreading his presentation for NYIT’s Corporate Challenge, the Writing Center can also help more students preparing speeches, presentations, and posters for courses throughout the curriculum. Future events, including one in October for the National Day on Writing, will also familiarize more students with our resources and motivate them to become stronger writers.