Recent Blog Posts

It's a new semester in the writing center, with a number of changes and things to look forward to:

Changes

1.  The WCOnline scheduling system has been upgraded.  The good news is that it will allow us to do more things with appointments, emails, and...

Trixie Smith
44 weeks 5 days ago

The idea of asking all of my students to periodically post to a blog here on the Michigan State University Writing Center's website isn't one I made on a whim - I had heard several of my peers discussing various methods of employing blogging within their courses with interesting (read: "positive...

beatty
44 weeks 5 days ago

Marilee and I have been spending some time trying to get the Collaboration Space wiki under way. For those of you who haven't heard me talk about this site yet, it is a wiki space that hopes to connect instructors (especially graduate student instructors) with consultants in order for both...

elena.adkins
44 weeks 5 days ago

If you look into the theme of the EDGES conference, you actually find a lot of similarities with the Writing Center missions and philosophy such as the ideas of diversity, interdisciplinary, multimedia communication, and challenging and pushing ideas to the edge...

I am copying the e-mail...

Scott Chiu
45 weeks 2 days ago

Have you ever read a sentence so long that by the time you got to the end, you forgot what was at the beginning? I'd bet that most of us have thanks to our always oh so wonderfully written textbooks. Thankfully though, cognitive psychology can teach us why this happens and how to avoid it in our...

jensen
50 weeks 4 days ago

"The Writing Center is a busy place."

 Usually I add "especially this time of year."  But the truth is we've been busy all year.  Our online schedule stays booked up, usually at least a week in advance.  Some weeks are almost full several weeks in advance.  It's...

Trixie Smith
50 weeks 4 days ago

This year one of my courses asked me for a type of composition I'd never done before: handouts. We were asked not only to present our research in powerpoint form, but also create a handout. This was a perfectly reasonable way to go about things and so actually didn't think anythng of it until...

jensen
50 weeks 5 days ago

Recently, I've fielded a number of queries about working at The Writing Center, so I thought an explanation of how to pursue the wonderful opportunity of working at The Writing Center at MSU deserved its own post.

Trixie Smith
1 year 3 days ago

Bragging on my writing consultants.  Thanks, John, for this creative announcement:

Trixie Smith
1 year 6 days ago

Just a reminder that we're hoping to take a large group to the East Central Writing Center Association conference this spring, so work on those projects, find people to partner with, get help with your proposals--I'm certainly happy to help you with a proposal.  And mark the time on your...

Trixie Smith
1 year 6 days ago