1. 1
Opportunities in launching a pilot Writing Center as an institutional initiative
Elizabeth Narváez Cardona
Department of Language
Faculty of Social Communication
Writing centers in Colombian higher
education
These initiatives belong to private
universities located in the capital of the
country, Bogotá D.C. (# 1 # 3), Santiago de
Cali (# 2), and Barranquilla (# 4).
Daily-life of writing centers
In analyzing the websites of the writing
centers # 1 and # 3, I have identified
preliminary answers upon what is the daily life
of a writing center1.
Writing center counts as a university
site in which the students could ask for free
writing tutoring to succeed in their programs.
In doing so, the student can set an
appointment with someone called “tutor” to
receive assistance in accomplishing their
writing assignments. This tutor will be a
graduate student. During the appointment
1 Green, J., Dixon, C., & Zaharlick, A., (2003).
Ethnography as a logic of Inquiry. In J. Flood, D.
Lapp & J. Squire (Eds.) The Handbook for Research
in the Teaching of the English Language Arts. New
Jersey: Erlbaum.
the tutor interacts with the students and not
with their texts. The students should bring to
the appointments, the instructors´ prompts
and the actual texts written as part of their
writing assignments.
Furthermore, the analysis2 reveals that
in these institutional sites, writing is conceived
mostly to support writing assignments to fulfill
faculty expectations regardless the disciplines.
Therefore, students are provided by guidelines
offered by the websites to support, among
other issues:
Citation strategies.
Strategies to understand and
decipher the instructors’ expectations
with the writing assignments.
Strategies to incorporate language
instructor patterns and specific
discourse style into writing
assignments.
2 Spradley, J. P. (1979). The ethnographic interview.
For Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
A student could also
come to a tutoring
session without having
written a paper yet,
but still get help by
discuss ideas and
creating an outline of
what they intend
writing
A tutor could also help students with learning
new writing or reading strategies, or how to
respond to a professor’s feedback, or how to
write documents or writing assignments that
they have not written before.

2. 2
Our imagined writing center…
…would undertake other types of writing
not addressed in our first year composition
courses
The current freshman composition courses
led by the Department of Language for the
Faculties of Social Communication,
Economics and Business help students to
explore and understand the new demands of
reading and writing for their first semester.
Accordingly, essays, research reports, and oral
communications are used as type of
documents that students will have to write in
accomplishing their first semester assignments.
In the case of Faculty in Engineering, a 19-
hour workshop is offered as part of the
professional course “Introduction to
Engineering 1”. This workshop aims at
providing students with guidance to select
and analyze secondary resources to build an
innovative project, developed as part of the
course “Introduction to engineering 1”, and to
write the final report for the professor.
Consequently, our department already
knows that in our University students and
faculty members write or ask for essays,
research reports, oral communications, and
project reports. However, we can also learn
what, when, and how other types of
documents are produced by the students in
their programs and fields as part of their
specific professional or disciplinary growth
(e.g., research reports, case-study reports, lab
reports, and posters).
…would support in learning of writing and
communication patterns of the disciplines
Writing studies research3 has
confirmed that when students can fulfill our
expectations in writing assignments, this might
be associated with the students’ abilities to
3 Driscoll, L. D., & Wells, J. (2012). Beyond knowledge
and skills: Writing transfer and the role of student
dispositions. Composition Forum, 26(Fall), Retrieved
from
http://compositionforum.com/issue/26/beyond-
knowledge-skills.php
Moore, J. (2012). Mapping the questions: The state
of writing-related transfer research. Composition
Forum, 26(Fall), Retrieved from
http://compositionforum.com/issue/26/map-
questions-transfer-research.php
use knowledge learned in other time and
spaces to face with the new situations
proposed by professors. This ability of students
might be boosted either i) by their own
motivations and learning strategies, or ii) by
specific teaching experiences in which the
specific contents and formats of the
disciplines are learned as part of developing
professional or disciplinary identities.
For instance, if engineering students
are exposed and taught explicitly over time
about the writing and communicative
features of lab reports, they not only become
familiarized with the patterns of a professional
communicative practice but also become
aware of the differences of such patterns in
contrast to other writing and communicative
situations, as poster or oral communication in
conferences addressing novice researchers.
Systematic teaching experiences can stabilize
our knowledge and increase the probability to
write lab reports in new situations. Over time,
when we are able to face new writing and
communicative situations using our stable
prior knowledge, we can acknowledge what
we have learned4.
Accordingly, the following proposal of a pilot
writing center aims at addressing students and
leading faculty development programs for a
discipline during the first year to support
students´ writing in the center while
developing, along with faculty members,
other curriculum opportunities.
Affording our writing center
Our teaching team
In 2012, 31% out of the total of
professors in the Department of Language
taught the writing 19-hour workshop in
Engineering. The total of these professors were
hired by hour every semester (19 week long).
Moreover, 40% of the teaching team is in
charge of the composition freshman courses
in the Faculty of Social Communication, and
36% for the same courses in the Faculty of
Economics and Business.
Based on the historical tracking report
of the teaching team, currently, out of 7
tenured professors in the Department, 4 have
gained experiences as specialized instructors
4 Rounsaville, A. (2012). Selecting genres for transfer:
The role of uptake in students’ antecedent genre
knowledge. Composition Forum, 26(Fall), Retrieved
from http://compositionforum.com/issue/26/selectin
g-genres-uptake.php

3. 3
for freshman courses in different disciplines.
This means that developing the curriculum for
the courses has been mostly in charge of
these 4 professors. Consequently, affording a
writing center targeting students and faculty
population of all the faculties and aiming at
supporting the differences of the disciplines
might not be realistic, mostly because the 4
tenured faculty members are also in charge of
the research, publish, and outreach projects.
Delimiting a disciplinary scope and learning
moments
Given that our Departmental mission
acknowledges the role “(…) of discursive
competences as essential conditions for
professional achievement in all disciplines”,
the writing center might start as a pilot
experience addressing a discipline.
Additionally, because the department offers a
workshop in the Faculty of Engineering instead
an autonomous course as in the other
faculties, the pilot writing center might address
students and faculty members of Engineering
during the freshman year to strengthen our
presence with that Faculty while we boost
developing an autonomous course.
In developing this pilot writing center,
composition faculty could learn about
disciplinary writing in Engineering through
conducting a research project from which the
writing center scopes will be delimited.
Accordingly, the pilot writing center will be a
project with two stages. The first stage is
described as follows.
Schedule project
Activities January February March April May June July August
Presenting the project in the
Faculty Senate of
Engineering and negotiate
the scope and the
expectations
Interviewing the Dean of
the Faculty of Engineering
and the Chair of the
department and analyzing
the information collected
Interviewing faculty
members of Engineering for
the first year and analyzing
the information collected
Asking permission to visit
and freshman courses in
Engineering and
composition
Observing classes in
Engineering and in
composition
Presenting the project in
freshman courses to recruit
students
Conducting and analyzing
interviews with students
Collecting and analyzing
students writing samples
Analyzing the data and
developing a pilot writing
proposal
Activities January February March April May June July August
Budget $$$$$