By addressing how writing centers can work to help computer science students be ready for professional challenges related to writing in computer science fields, this study of computer science professionals and students illustrates how findings were applied to train a team of writing tutors. Drawing upon self-reports about writing in computer science jobs and writing in computer science classes, the authors identify both professionals' workplace writing challenges and students' perceptions of these challenges. Implications for writing center practitioners and researchers are discussed, including how writing centers can collaborate with computer science faculty to acquire resources, access the discourse of computer science assignments, and implement a similar training program in their centers.

I showed up for work on my first day of work and they didn 't even have an office for me. The writing center was just an empty classroom filled with just dirt and boxes and ladybugs. Ladybugs, which is actually an omen of good fortune , which is kind of interesting. And so I sat down at a computer I found in the library and I started typing and I typed a philosophy

In its 2011 report, the CCCC Committee on Best Practice in Online Writing Instruction (OWI) states that it "takes no position on the oft-asked question of whether OWI should be used and practiced in postsecondary settings because it accepts the reality that currently OWI is used and practiced in such settings" (Hewett et al. 2). The committee claims that teachers and administrators, including those in writing centers, "typically are simply migrating traditional faceto-face writing pedagogies to the online setting-both fully online and hybrid. Theory and practice specific to OWI has yet to be fully developed" (7). Hewets recent book on OWI echoes these concerns, and she claims that without a theory of OWI, it is "disturbingly easy" to assume that face-to-face pedagogy is better than computer-mediated instruction (i Online 32).

Joanna Wolfe is Associate Professor of English at the University of Louisville where she teaches courses in rhetoric and composition, human-computer interaction, and research methods. She is author of the forthcoming textbook Team Writing from Bedford-St. Martin's, a guide to writing collaboratively and working on a team. Her previous scholarly work has appeared in journals such as Written Communication, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, and Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning.

It will come as no surprise, perhaps, to say that writing centers have long been grounded in -some would say "bounded by" -the conventions of printed text. True, writing centers, like most of the rest of the world, have been influenced by advances in computer technology, most recently through the explosive growth of Online Writing Labs (OWLs) and computer-mediated conferencing with students, but fundamentally, most of the interactions between students and tutors still center on the handwritten or printed texts that are placed on a table between them or, perhaps, shared in a wordprocessed file. These texts are structured linearly and hierarchically, moving along a single path from beginning to end, following well-known and universally taught discourse forms that have emerged from a print -based rhetorical tradition.

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.

Writing center administration, a highly complex task as is, has an added complication in that so many new directors plunge in with an almost total lack of preparation. Undertaking their new responsibilities with the best of intentions but with high levels of anxiety, they normally begin by seeking out the books, journals, and conferences that will help them, and they journey to other writing centers to take notes and ask questions. They inquire about all kinds of specifics on the size of the budget, ways to select staff, methods of evaluation, types of computers and other materials that should be purchased, and so on. All of this is apparently useful as hundreds of thriving writing centers around the country have directors who followed that route. And they have learned from those who traveled the same roads before them.

ERIC and NCTE combined, in 1983, to produce a small, fifty-page booklet giving English teachers the no-nonsense lowdown on the use of computers for instruction.Its name was straightforward, Computers in the English Classroom , and its advice was traditional.After mentioning various drill and practice and record-keeping possibilities, the document informed us, with time-honored NCTE gentleness, that "the value of the computer lies in the fact that it provides one more tool for the teacher to use."It then made what seems to me a manifesto of sorts."[The computer] frees the teacher from certain mundane chores so that instructional time is better utilized."Isn't this the way most of us have always thought about computers, as mechanical servants which can take over "certain mundane chores" so that we can get to the higher-level stuff?When you think about it, the idea is not all that comforting.It lies at the heart of the scary theory that computers intended to replicate low-level skills may someday co-opt skills considerably above the "mundane-chores" category so that the servant becomes the master or, at the very least, the master finds himself tailoring and limiting his activities for the convenience of the servant.The concept of a "servant-master" relationship between computer and human being suggests an anthropomorphic view of computers which, I think, channels our attitudes and severely limits our options in using computers.What I call the "Replacement Fallacy," the belief that computers are most successful when they are most human, hems us in between

Chaos reigns.Or does it?When uninitiated visitors walk into our Apple Lab (which is a part of our Writing Lab) at Hazelwood West High, their first impression often is "How do you work when there is so much noise going on?"But when the fifteen printers stop, visitors are even more amazed by the quiet diligence and concentration of the students who are working at the computers.Our Apple He Lab often accommodates twenty to twenty-five students and teachers, all or most of whom will be working on very different kinds of writing activities.For example, a typical class hour might include a home economics teacher composing a newsletter to parents on the Newsroom program, five to ten students typing various parts of research papers on Applewriter, a student or two making a cover sheet for a paper on Print Shop , three to five journalism students composing stories for the school newspaper, a student using the Sensible Speller to check a paper for misspelled words or to count the number of words in a contest paper, a student writing a paper for a political science class, a teacher assistant making a crossword puzzle on Crossword Magic for a vocabulary lesson, and the Writing Lab assistant updating Lab records on PFS : File .And while all these people are working, if no one is having problems, I may sit down at a computer myself to work on a grant proposal or to write an article. Getting StartedWe did not set out to have a computer lab.

At best it's hard work, often it's very difficult, and -to a great number of high school students -it's "boring," "stupid," and "impossible."But wait.Look down in the writing room.It's a bird.It's a plane.It's Super WANDAH : HBJ Writer, Faster than a speeding ballpoint, more powerful than a typewriter, able to leap tall essays in a single class period, Super WANDAH helps students produce writing that is clear, precise, and fun to read, writing that is an example of truth, justice, and the American way.Well, perhaps I exaggerate a tad.Maybe WANDAH can't do it all, or even most.But it's possible that we've given her a cape she wasn't supposed to be wearing.Is her real name Clark Kent?Or has Kryptonite robbed WANDAH of all power.Let's go back to the beginning, which occurred not on some distant planet but in some sunny corner of UCLA.WANDAH began life as a rather innocuous writing program to assist incoming freshman with their writing skills.At the same time, the head of Logan High's English Department had completed a course with the Utah Writer's Project.With a missionary's zeal, she sought to bring the entire department into the waters of process writing.Soon we were saved as well.But that didn't stop our department head.Something was needed to help the work along, something that could assist our efforts in converting uninspired writers from the darkest corners of the eleventh and twelth grades into born-again thinkers and writers, capable of heavenly composition."Could not that something be a computer, Time's Man of the Year?" reasoned our department head, and quicker than you can say "floppy disk," Logan High had sixteen computers, four printers, and WANDAH.

Our advanced degrees in English did not train us for all these roles, and many of us enroll in courses and seminars in everything from grant writing to computer literacy in an attempt to make up for what we have missed.But there is one important