Many higher education institutions offer drop-in tutoring programs hosted by writing specialists to support struggling students while others may also/alternatively embed tutors directly into courses. In this quasi-experimental study, we compared survey results from 100 students in basic/developmental courses that featured embedded peer tutors with 78 students who experienced tutoring via a walk-in writing center. Variables explored included writing efficacy and course/tutor perception survey items. While students generally found both embedded and walk-in tutoring to be helpful, the ratings for embedding tutoring tended to be statistically stronger for most variables we investigated, suggesting that students responded more positively to embedded tutoring.

This article examines whether writing center (WC) visits significantly and meaningfully impact college writing. Eighty-two quantitative WC studies conducted between 1954 and 2019 were reviewed. Sixty-four included control groups and produced 71 measurable outcomes, which were reanalyzed via five meta-analyses, where 8,168 student WC visitors were compared with 15,119 nonvisitors. Both a statistically and meaningfully significant relationship between student WC visitors and writing performance resulted, with weighted average effect sizes from near moderate (.39) to near large (.70) and between 27% and 42% more student WC visitors having greater writing outcomes than nonvisitors. A sixth meta-analysis was conducted combining the five meta-analyses and all 71 WC outcomes; this showed 31.2% (weighted average effect size = 0.47) more student WC visitors demonstrated greater writing performance than nonvisitors. A seventh meta-analysis was performed that included the 15 WC outcomes focused on struggling writers, with 40.6% (effect size = 0.65) more struggling-writer WC visitors demonstrating greater writing outcomes than nonvisitors. Findings show using the WC has meaningful impact on writing generalizable to college WCs and WCs may especially support struggling writers. How these results may apply to struggling writers from diverse backgrounds is discussed in the context of reducing the academic achievement gap.

Like many in our field, I rose up “through the ranks” to my present position as a director of the Writing Center at a small, private college of pharmacy and health sciences. My career path started while I was pursuing an M.A. in English, where I tutored in the university’s Writing Center. Then, when I was back in school to complete a doctorate in education, I once again was given the opportunity to tutor in the university’s Writing Center, and, eventually, to study that Center as the subject of my dissertation. I graduated in the spring of 1996, and by the fall of that year I was hired by my current college to start its Writing Center. Four years later, I am a faculty member in the School of Arts and Sciences and hold administrative responsibility for the entire writing program, as well as for a new initiative on first-year student experience. What a smooth path that narrative above seems to indicate, a path of increasing professional opportunities, from “novice” to “expert,” from tutor to director, from student to faculty member, a “transformation” of sorts that is easily the script that we would write for many in our field. But here is another way of telling that story: My first writing center job came during my second semester of pursuing an M.A. in English/Creative Writing and a high school teaching credential. I would have preferred to be a TA and teach composition in the classroom, but most of my fellow graduate students were experienced teachers and gained the coveted TA positions. Instead, I tutored in the university’s Writing Center for $7 per hour, a rate that did not change in the three years that I worked there. I worked primarily with basic writing students, who came to the Writing Center as a course requirement and who were made to sift through a grammar/usage workbook, completing exercises on modals and subject/verb agreement and nouns and antecedents (which still happens, though now these exercises are computer Sherwood, Steve. “How to Survive the Hard Times.” The Writing Lab Newsletter 17.10 (1993): 4-8.

Despite the advent of computerized spelling checkers, being a poor speller is still asignificant burden for a writer. Spelling errors are stigmatizing, considered a mark of illiteracy both in academia and in business. Occasions for spelling errors are far more frequent than are opportunities for other errors, and misspellings arc more noticeable. Relatively few readers respond to comma splices or dangling participles, but virtually everyone reacts to "dosen't" or "stuped" or "thair." For the poor speller, writing, particularly in impromptu situations, is a gamble; spelling errors always threaten to sabotage the communication. Since spelling instruction is usually not part of the firstyear composition curriculum -even in a basic writing course, only some students will be poor spellers -assistance with spelling problems should become a regular part of a writing center program; it may be the only resource available to students who need help.

In the basic writing program at The University of Akron, we have been using peer tutors as facilitators of collaborative learning in the classroom for two years. One day a week, each tutor has a group of six to eight students who are usually working on rough drafts. Recently, when I