Ask OASISWelcome to the Writing Center
Presented October 10, 2019
Last updated 10/30/2019
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Housekeeping
- Recording
- Will be available online within 24 hours.
- Interact
- Polls, files, and links are interactive.
- Q&A
- Now: Use the Q&A box.
- Later: Send to writingsupport@mail.waldenu.edu or visit our Live Chat Hours.
- Help
- Ask in the Q&A box.
- Choose “Help” in the upper right-hand corner of the webinar room
Audio: KACY: Hi, everyone. And thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Kacy Walz. I'm an instructor at the Walden Writing Center and I'm going to be facilitating our webinar on an introduction to the Walden Writing Center and our website. Before I hand things over to our presenter Claire, I’m just going to go over a few housekeeping items.
First, this is being recorded so if you need to leave or if you want to come back and revisit some of the things we talk about today, the recording will be available online within 24 hours. With it, you'll also find a lot of other recorded webinars about various writing topics. You'll also be able to interact with Claire and with the other participants of this webinar through polls, files, and chat boxes similar to the one that you used at the very beginning to introduce yourself. All the polls, files, and links are interactive so you can use them now or if you're watching the recording later.
There's going to be lots of information in this webinar, so if you have any questions you can use the Q&A box. I'm going to be watching that that box and I will respond to your questions as quickly as I can. But if I'm unable to get to your question or if you have questions later on, you can always email us at writingsupport@mail.waldenu.edu, or you can check out our live chat hours and you can talk to someone that way.
Finally, if you're having any technical difficulties, you can reach out to me in the Q&A box. I do have a few tricks. But there's also a help button in the upper right‑hand corner of the webinar room, and that's Adobe Connects help button. So often times, that's the best place to look.
Now, I'm going to turn things to our presenter, Claire.
Visual: Slide changes to the title of the webinar, “Welcome to the Writing Center” and the speaker’s name and information: Claire Helakoski, Writing Instructor, Walden University Writing Center
Audio: CLAIRE: Thanks, Kacy. Hi, everybody. I'm Claire Helakoski, coming in today from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Welcome to this webinar. We're kind of going to go over the Writing Center, our different types of services, what you can come to us for and sort of how to navigate those different services that we have as well as our website today.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Agenda
• (1) Who are we?
• (2) How can you best use our services?
Appropriate service for appropriate time
• (3) Resources by degree
Undergraduate
Graduate
Capstone
Audio: Let's go ahead and get started. We're going to talk about who we are. So who is the Writing Center, what do we mean when we say the Writing Center, how can you best use our services, what is going to be right for you, depending on the amount of time you have and what type of question you have, and what resources you have based on the degree you're seeking here at Walden, whether that's undergraduate, graduate or you're in the capstone premise perspective stage.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Chat #1
Why are you joining us? What are you hoping to learn about the Writing Center?
Audio: All right. So, let's do a quick welcome and hello. Why are you joining us, and what are you hoping to learn about the Writing Center? This is helpful for me so that I can make sure if you bring up anything that I am not going to talk about in the presentation I can touch on it now or add it to the end. Go ahead and type in the chat box and let us know why you're here and what you're hoping to learn today.
[silence as participants respond]
So, I see a note about help on the Ph.D. once you're past the premise or prospectus we have resources that are of course helpful on kind of writing trends and grammar and things like that. But the work does tend to get really content specific for your program at that stage, so we don't have as many direct resources where students at that stage, once your premise on prospectus is approved. However, you can still use lots of the features of our site, web pages on general writing trends and ideas. But I just want to put that out there in case there are other students who have their premise prospectus approved already.
Right. I'm seeing looking for help with APA. We definitely have support for APA questions, and I'll go over how to submit those questions. Okay. It looks like that's everybody's input for now. So, we'll go ahead and move on and do let us know, you know, as we’re, as I'm presenting if you have any questions that come up or areas of our services that you would like additional clarification on. You can let us know in the chat box. And we'll go ahead and do that. I do see somebody typing so, I'm just going to wait a second. It looks like there are additional questions. I'll wait just a second. But in a moment, we'll go through a tour of our website so you can see how to use that to kind of go through if you're coming to our website and you know sort of what you're looking for, what that search process will look like for you.
Yeah, I see a question about, yeah, making paper review appointments. We're definitely going to cover that today. APA, yeah, I will definitely show you guys how to find our resources on APA.
All right. So, I'll go ahead and look at our website next. We'll go ‑‑ not next
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Who Are We?
Read more about our staff on our website
• Writing Instructors
All students (undergraduate, master’s, doctoral)
Course work: Papers, discussion posts, theses
Preproposal: Prospectus, premise
Paper review appointments (and more!)
• Editors
Doctoral capstone students & studies
Form and Style review (and more!)
Doctoral Capstone Form and Style website
Sent to editors by Chair
Audio: [chuckling], but in a minute. Sorry, folks. So, who we are, our Writing Center staff are made up of writing instructors? So that's like Kacy and myself. We present these webinars. So, we work with all students. We have information that supports all students, the undergraduate, masters and doctoral students on our web pages. We can help with course work. So, we'll review papers, discussion post, thesis, masters, capstone, that kind of stuff. And we work with preproposal students, so students who have the premise or prospectus that we're working on. And we do this through paper review appointments and many other services I'll talk about today. The academic ‑‑ office of academic editing or the editors work with doctoral capstone students and studies, and they conduct form and style reviews, which are a formal process that your dissertation will go through at some point.
They also host the doctoral capstone form and style website. So, there's information there if you are kind ‑‑ if your premise or prospectus is approved, then that's a good resource for you to go and check out. And you can be sent to the editors by your chair for kind of additional support and feedback beyond what they have on their website and their form and style reviews.
And we have a wonderful staff page, if you'd like to see our smiling faces and learn a little bit about each of us individually.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: We Are Here to Help!
• Writing
Organization
Idea development
Paragraphing
• APA
References
Citations
Style
• Grammar
Sentence structure
Word choice
Tone
Audio: All right. So, we are here to help. Right? I'm going to mostly focus on the services that the writing instructors have today because I know those services are the best. So, we're here to help with writing, with organization, idea development, paragraphing. We're here to help with APA, those references, citation, and general style requirements. We're here to support you with grammar, through sentence structure, word choice and tone, as pen well as many other writing topics that don't fall under these really broad umbrellas.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: How Can You Collaborate with the Writing Center?
Depends on:
• Type of assignment
• Assignment deadline
• Your time
• Your learning preferences
Audio: So how can you work with the Writing Center? That's what we're going to kind of go over and focus on today. Right? You can collaborate with the Writing Center, depending on the assignment, the deadline, how much time you have, and your learning preferences. But we have services to help you no matter what stage of the process ‑‑ of the writing process you're in, how much time you have, etcetera. So, we can always offer some support and it just depends on what you're looking for and what your timeline and assignment specifications look like. We'll go through some scenarios today to kind of help you figure that out to think about what stage you're in and what phase of the Writing Center support will be most helpful to you in those circumstances.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: “My Paper Is Due Tonight!”
Immediate Help
Audio: All right. So, one example is my paper is due tonight. So, if you need immediate help, then you can visit our website.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Visit the Website
Let’s Take a Look!
Audio: So, let's go ahead and take a look at that website. I will share it with all of you. Great. Here we go. Kacy, will you let me know when you can see it?
Walden University writing center website showing
Sorry there, folks. Kacy, can you see that?
KACY: Yes. Sorry. I forgot I was on mute.
CLAIRE: I'm sharing it again. Sorry there, folks. There we go. So, this is our website. We're at academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter, you can access it through your student portal, you can just google Walden University writing center and we pop right up. However, you're getting to us, this is our page web page. If you need help tonight, need help right now, then what you can do is figure out what you kind of need help with. And then review our web pages to see what we have for you there. So, if you need help with APA, some of you mentioned working on those reference lists. So, this is my favorite page in our website. So, you would go to our theme tabs here, APA style. I clicked on reference list. And then I'm going to go to common reference list examples. This is my favorite page on our entire web site because we have correct APA style examples of all these sort of general common reference list situations and source types that you're probably going to come across.
So you can say, you know, I really don't know how to site this YouTube video, and then you can click on online video or web cast and there's an example of how to site a video in your classroom and then a nice example on how to site a video on YouTube. So that's really helpful, right, because then you can take a look and compare to what you have in your references already. I think I'll talk about chat in a moment, but if chat is live, this little chat with us button is on the side. If you have a fall up question or wantned more specific follow‑up, you can click chat with us and you can connect with a writing instructor who is currently online to support you.
If you have questions about grammar, you can go to grammar and composition tab. If you have questions about our scholarly writing, you can check out our scholarly writing tab. You can also go to our big writing help tab. It has sort of the types of resources that we have support with. We have those paper reviews that won't help you the day of, but it is good to know where the paper reviews button is on our web page. And you can click on webinars to see more webinars. You can go to our modules page. That's really helpful. There are these mini lessons you can go through, and we have modules on grammar, APA, plagiarism prevention, and scholarly writing as well as goal planning. So that's a really great, helpful resource. If nobody is online and you need help understanding a concept, my paper is due tomorrow, that can be a really helpful resource.
We also have interactive and multimedia resources, such as we have a pod cast, we have short YouTube videos that go over different concepts of writing. You can find support for, and you can always use our search bar. Let's say I want to look up stuff on meal plan because that's paragraphing, that I'm trying to working on, I can search right in the search bar there ‑‑ and maybe I really want to look at blog posts. I can click the blog post tab and then check out different blog posts we have on that topic. I can leave it at all and I’ll find our web pages on the topic as well as the blog posts. If you're not really sure where to start, I recommend that search bar. And our home page also has quick answers like how do you turn in ‑‑ I might type in turn it in and find these results in quick answers. That's not just limed to the Writing Center. There's links to some departments, answers in there. If you have a question and you're not sure it's a Writing Center question, quick answers is a great place to type your question in as well.
All right. I'm going to go ahead and stop sharing here. There we go. Do let us know if you have any questions about our u our website and how to use it, and I'll be going through some more information as we go. That's our website. It's a great resource.
So, if you need help with your paper tonight, you can use our website for whatever you're looking for. Maybe you have time to do a module. Maybe you just want clarification on how to format a reference entry. It’s a great resource.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Use Grammarly
- Grammar checker
- Like Word’s spell check
- No formatting
- Can make mistakes
- Use Waldenu e-mail address
- Follow our help tips
Audio: Also, my paper is due tonight and you need someone to look at your paper. You can use Grammarly. Walden students have free access to Grammarly, and we have some information about how to set up your account on our web site although it's a separate program. So, we don't run it, but we do have some supporting information about how to read Grammarly reports, how to get set up with Grammarly. And you can even add it to your Word as an addin to your Microsoft word and have it check once your draft is complete. So, it's sort of like spell check for grammar. It doesn't check for APA things, like formatting. It does make mistakes and it ‑‑ there are several nuance APA preferences that Grammarly just doesn't pick up on. However, it can be a really helpful extra proofreader for your work, especially if grammar is something that's a struggle for you or you're working on as one of your writing goals. So that's a great my paper is due tomorrow resource for you.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: “I have a couple of days before I need an answer.”
Help within 24 Hours
Audio: All right. I have a couple days before I need an answer. So, we do have support services that can help you within 24 hours. If your paper is due in, you know, more than two hours or six hours, then we have some resources to help you within 24 hours.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Ask Us on Social Media
• Blog
• Twitter: @WUWritingCenter
Audio: You can ask us on social media. So, we have our blog. You might find a blog post about a topic and want some clarification. You can post on there and we'll respond in 24 hours. You can check out our Facebook and we'll respond on there. We have a Twitter account @WUWritingCenter, and you can ask us questions there and we'll respond within 24 hours.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Send Us an E-mail
Writing Instructors:
General writing, APA, grammar, & Writing Center service questions
Editors:
Capstone-specific questions
Audio: You can end us an email. General writing, APA, grammar, Writing Center questions should go to writingsupport@mail.waldenu.edu and somebody will respond to your question there within 24 hours.
If you have a specific question on your ‑‑ if your ‑‑ on your dissertation, then you should ask the editors at editor@mail.waldenu.edu. After the premise or prospectus, writing instructors will just forward that email over to the editors anyway. So, if you're in that stage, go ahead and email editor@mail.waldenu.edu if you have specific questions.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Talk with via Live Chat
Find current chat hours on home page
Access via any page on our website
• Questions about APA, grammar, writing, and Writing Center services
• Quick review of sentences, citations, reference entries, and paragraphs
Audio: You can talk to us via live chat. I showed you guys what the tab looks like in the live chat since it was up on our website. So, if you go to different pages on our website, there might be that chat with that link on the side but also on the main home page of our website, we have our live chat hours. If chat is on, then you can hit the chat button at the bottom. So that's a great way to talk to somebody in real time. If you have a question, you're trying to figure something out, it's a really nice way to connect directly with the writing instructor. And the editors have a chat service too if you're in your dissertation as well.
We might review a sentence, a reference entry, or potentially a paragraph. It is sort of designed for quick questions and if you need longer, more focused feedback, then a paper review is more of a service for you. But chat is great in that it's immediate. So, it's in that real time.
Visual: Slide changes to the following:
“I’m looking to develop my writing skills overall.”
“I don’t need an answer for a week or more.”
Help by Appointment & Developing Writing Skills
Audio: Okay. Maybe you have a lot more time. It's not a within 24, it's not has to be in 24 hours, it's not my paper is due tonight, it just more of a general goal. I'm looking to develop my writing skills. I don't need an answer for maybe a week. So, you can get help by appointment and develop those writing skills with us.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Reserve a Paper Review Appointment
• Purpose:
• Provide feedback to help you develop skills long-term.
Mini Writing Lesson:
Comment on some, not all of a draft
Expected to use and learn from feedback (apply)
Help you take ownership of the revision process
Audio: So, you can reserve a paper review appointment. I talked about these a little bit before. Paper review appointments are for students still in their course work or working on their premise or prospectus. If your premise or prospectus is approved then you are beyond those paper review appointment services. I know a few of you in the earlier chat mentioned you're in that phase, which is great and we still have all these other resources for you. We just won't do a one on one paper review because things get so content focused and the intention of that phase of your work is really to work closely with your faculty at that point.
So, if you're not there yet, though, then anything for your course work, discussion post, papers for your courses, your premise or prospectus up until it's reviewed, then you can make a paper review appointment and we will provide feedback to help you develop those long-term writing skills. We'll provide you with sort of a mini writing lesson. We'll provide comments on some, probably not all, of your draft especially if it's a longer draft. If it's discussion post, we'll have time to go through the whole thing. Patterns in your work, provide with feedback and comments, suggestions as well as resources throughout your draft, what we're able to read of your draft. And then we'll give you some next steps so you can implement and apply our feedback and help you take ownership of the revision process.
You can make up to two paper review appointments a week and you can schedule them up to two weeks in advance. If this sounds like a service that would really be beneficial to you, what you can do is sort of schedule yourself out, look at when your paper is do and make some time to carve on the schedule. You can have the same instructor or different instructors, and kind of create that accountability for yourself that I'm going to submit this for feedback, I’m going to commit to revising it by the end of the week and then submit it to the person again and get their take on my revisions and how things are going. That's a really great resource to help you work on that revision, work towards your writing goals, and you can set it up ahead of time.
You can also catch a same day appointment if you're ready to attach. But it's nice to schedule ahead of time and potentially have more than one a week if you know you have time to revise so you can get additional support and feedback.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Reserve a Paper Review Appointment
• Make an appointment
myWalden portal
myPASS scheduling system
• Complete form
Give details
Express concerns and areas for help
• Attach paper
5:00 a.m. ET day of appointment
OR immediately
• Relax (whew!)
Feedback via e-mail
Audio: All right. So how do I do this? How do I use myPass, how do I make a paper review appointment? You can use your myWalden portal to get to us. And you'll use the myPASS scheduling system. So, you do have to make an account separate from your Walden account with our myPASS system. But it's just your email and password and little bit of information about your writing, where you are in your program. And then ‑‑ so you'll complete that form ‑‑ sorry, so you'll make an account [chuckling]. And then you will make an appointment and your appointment will have a form where you'll give details on what you were working on, what your goals are for that document and you'll attach your work by the date of the appointment. So, you can let us know what you want, what your focus is. A few of you mentioned I really want help with references so you can tell us something like that in the appointment form. And then you'll attach your paper by 5:00 a.m. the day of the appointment, or right away if you’re ready, or if it’s a same day appointment. If you made that appointment two weeks out, for example, you probably don't have your paper done yet. So, you'll get an email reminder before that date reminding you to attach your work. You'll attach it the day of your appointment. And then you relax.
Once you attach your work, you sit back and relax and you'll get an email from writing support that lets you know when your appointment is ready and when your feedback has been attached. You'll go into your appointment form, grab that paper, and look it over and it'll have all that embedded feedback from your writing instructor, and that feedback will come within the day of or day after your appointment in the system. So, if I had an appointment today, I know I will get my paper bark either today or tomorrow.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Questions
What questions do you have about paper review appointments?
Audio: All right. So, I just talked a lot about paper review appointments [chuckling]. So, what questions do you have about those paper review appointments? Sorry, Kacy, that's just a general question. Not a chat. If you have questions about your paper review appointment, let us know in the Q&A box. Did we have any questions come in about that, Kacy?
KACY: We have not had any paper review questions yet. But please do let me know in the Q&A box if you'd like any information, more information than what Claire is providing. I can also try to help look up some different things. So yeah, let me know in the Q&A box what I can do to help you guys out.
CLAIRE: Okay. Then I'm assuming I was wonderfully clear and you have no questions for that reason [chuckling]. So, we'll go ahead and move on.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Attend a Live Webinar
- More of what you’re seeing here!
- Watch recordings at your convenience
- Check the calendar to register
- 45+ topics on grammar, APA, and scholarly writing
Audio: All right. So, some other resources, again, if you have time to devote to your writing, are attending a webinar. So, you're at a webinar right now. Congratulations. We have webinars on all kinds of topics. We have 45 plus topics on grammar, APA, scholarly writing. You can attend a live webinar like you are now where you register in advance. You can see our calendar with this link. So, you can plan ahead if you're able to come live and you'll be able to ask questions and do the activities in real time with us. And if you're unable to come to a live webinar but you really want to review a topic that we've covered, then you can watch a recording. So, we have all our webinars in an archive on our web page. So especially if this format appeals to you, hopefully it does if you're in this webinar now, especially if this format appears to you then you can go ahead and watch a recording or attend a live webinar for whatever topic or goal that you're looking for.
And our webinars are often a little more interactive than this one. I know this one is kind of giving you information. But we usually have exercises to practice the different concepts that we're talking about, etcetera.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Complete a Self-Paced Module
• Self-paced tutorials on a variety of topics:
APA citations and references
Plagiarism prevention
Grammar
Scholarly writing & paragraph development
Audio: All right. You can complete a module. So, I talked about those modules a little bit in our website tour. These are self‑paced tutorials on a variety of topics. We have APA citations and references. That's a really great one. I used it when I was first learning APA when I was hired here at Walden four years ago. I come from an MLA background, and I found that module so,so, helpful for my learning style because it was interactive, you get to practice. You get to spot what was wrong in a citation and it really helps practice that knowledge, so I found that especially helpful.
We have plagiarism prevention modules that goes over when and often in a site. We have grammar modules, we have scholarly writing and paragraph development modules, we have goal setting modules. So, they're nice, interactive sort of mini courses. You can take them on your own time. Take one section, go away, get to another section another day. There's not kind of a timer on it or anything. So that can be really helpful if you're looking to sort of buildup skills in an area and aren't sure exactly how much time you have.
There's a premodule quiz, and then there's interactive tutorials throughout the module, a post module quiz. You need an 80 percent score to pass the module, and you can make as many attempts as you like, and there's a certificate of completion at the end.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Chat
Which Writing Center resource do you see yourself using most?
Audio: All right. So, which Writing Center resource do you see yourself using the most after having kind of gone over these resources? You can also let me know if you did have any lingering questions about our resources. You can let me know there, too.
[silence as participants respond]
Any other resources, using Grammarly, webinars, short videos are really great.
[silence as participants respond]
Great. I'm so glad that our resources are helpful. You might need to try out a few different things to see what's going to best support you and your own learning style. I don't think I would have guessed that modules are a good fit for me necessarily but once I tried them, I found I really like them. So definitely give a few different resources a try as well.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Practice Student Scenarios
When do you use which service and why?
Audio: Moving on, we have some scenarios for you. These practice scenarios for when would you use which service and why. We'll go through kind of these different pretend students and talk about what problem they're having and then discuss what resources that I've talked about today might be most helpful for them.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Chat Box:
Susan isn’t sure how to cite a website she is using. Her paper is due in a few days, but she needs to find the right APA formatting to use.
Where should Susan look for help with her formatting?
Audio: So, we'll have a chat box. Susan isn't sure how to site a website she's using. Her paper is due in a few days, but she needs to find the right APA formatting to use. Where should Susan look for help with her formatting? Go ahead and let me know in the chat box. If you were Susan, where would you go?
[silence as participants respond]
So Grammarly isn't going to help with APA, although it is a good, nice, kind of immediate space to kind of get help with your work.
[silence as students respond]
So, I'm seeing some student’s kind of talking through that the Writing Center website might be helpful, that common reference page is probably a good place to go because she's wondering how to site her website. So that would have a nice visual example of what referencing a website is going to look for her. What else? We have lots of sources. There's not one right answer here. We have lots of resources.
[silence as participants respond]
What else might be helpful? Webinar could be really great because Susan has a few days. A webinar might be great for Susan since we do have webinars on citing and referencing various types of sources. Yeah, that's a great response. Additionally, Susan could probably email us since she has a couple days. She can email us if she's wondering about this particular website. Maybe Susan knows how to site and reference a web page in general but doesn't know what to do with this particular source. That happens a lot. So, she can email us at writingsupport@mail.waldenu.edu or she could come into our live chat hours and say, I'm trying to reference this website. I have this so far, but I'm not sure what to do about the publication year and let our chatter know about that and they'll work with her to get that correct reference entry. So great job, everybody.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Chat Box:
Mike is working on the final paper for his course that will be due in a few weeks. His faculty asked him to work on the transitions in his writing.
Where should Mike look for help with his transitions?
Audio: Let's go on and move to our next scenario. So, Mike is working on the final paper for his course. It will be due in a few weeks. His faculty asked him to work on the transitions in his writing. Where can Mike get that help for transitions?
[silence as participants respond]
The response about having a paper review. That's a great resource with transitions because transitions do deal with specific content in your work a little bit. So, it could be really helpful to have somebody look at exactly what you're working with. I wanted to note that Grammarly won't help with transitions. I mean, Grammarly would potentially point out if, you know, there were transitional phrases that were creating grammatical issues in Mike's writing, but that's not really the same thing as are those transitions are effective. Grammarly can’t evaluate, it’s very much like spell check where it'll just notice if there's an obvious grammatical error like wrong subject and verb, misused punctuation, that kind of thing.
Yeah, we also have a webinar on transitions and flow in your writing. That could be great for Mike. Yeah, and you can go ahead and search the website, right? We don't know exactly what Mike is looking for, but you can search our website. I know we have a pod cast on transitions. We have a transitions blog series in there. We have general web pages on transitional phrases and comparative language. So, there's a lot of different resources for Mike. And especially if he has time, right, then he might as well see what different resources we have and decide which one might be right for him. I would strongly recommend a paper review in that case since he has time and he has kind of a general writing goal, especially with transitions because it is helpful for someone to look at the actual content of your work. Yeah, great job, everyone.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Chat Box:
Nik is working on a discussion post that needs to be completed that evening. He has been told that his writing needs to be more scholarly.
Where should Nik look for help with making his writing scholarly?
Audio: Let's go ahead and move on to the last example. Forward the slide. There we go. Nick is working on a discussion post that needs to be completed that evening. He's been told that his writing needs to be more scholarly. So, his discussion post needs to be more scholarly and its due tonight. Where should nick look for help for his writing to be more scholarly?
[silence as participants respond
Visual: Yeah, nick could try and use the chat. However, if ‑‑ if he doesn't have, like, a specific example he's looking for to be more scholarly, the person in chat is probably going to give him some links to resources on scholarly writing, which is a useful use of the chat if you're having trouble. But yeah, chat won't be able to solve his scholarly writing needs by answering a specific question. Right?
Again, Grammarly really can't fix anything to do with content or tone. So Grammarly is not going to help his writing be more scholarly unless his issue with scholarly writing is that his writing is grammatically incorrect because Grammarly is a robot. So Grammarly can't tell if what you're saying is scholarly or not. It just knows whether the words make sense in that order.
Yeah, a module. We do have a scholarly writing module. So that would be a great source for him to check out if it's due that evening. Looking on the website for general guidelines on what scholarly writing means.
Yeah, and we do have a webinar on scholarly writing. That would be really helpful. It depends on how much time nick has and how much time he really wants to invest. Right? I would also say in this instance Nick ideally is probably not going to be able to implement a lot of changes to his discussion post if it's due that night. But he can get started on a couple of things and find the resources that he can maybe use more for the next paper. So, if you have kind of a bigger goal like scholarly writing or effective transitions, then same‑day help can ‑‑ it's better than nothing, absolutely, but it's not going to overhaul your writing instantly. It's not a simple fix the way an APA question is going to be. If you have general goals, I definitely recommend giving it more time and space to kind of work with our different resources.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Chat Box:
Amy knows this semester is going to be a challenge because there is a long paper due at the end of the semester. She isn’t sure how she can improve her writing.
Where should Amy look for help knowing how to improve her writing?
Audio: Okay. Let's go ahead and move on. Oh, we do have another scenario. My bad, guys. I thought there were only three. [Chuckling]. Amy knows this semester is going to be a challenge because there's a long paper due at the end of the semester. She isn't sure how she can improve her writing. Where should Amy look for help?
[silence as participants respond]
Yeah, I'm seeing great responses here about using webinars. Right? Amy might not know where to start, so she might want to pick a couple webinars that appeal to her. A paper review appointment is a really great resource for Amy because if she's not sure where to start, then a paper review can kinds of give her, you know, an overview of what patterns the writing instructor is seeing in her writing so that she can have somewhere to start.
Modules are great. We have a goal setting module that kind of goes over this ‑‑ it's great for students in this situation where you want to work on your writing and you're not quite sure what to work on. So, it does break down how to kind figure out where to start in creating a goal in your writing that's specific than just improving your writing.
Yeah, there are just blogs on writing. We have our pod cast. Amy might just want to poke around to a bunch of different resources and see what sounds like something she wants to work on in her work, too. Yeah, and a paper review would be my number 1 suggestion for Amy if she's really not sure where to start.
Okay. So that is my real last scenario.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Resources for Specific Populations
Multilingual Students
• Mastering the Mechanics webinar series
• Walden Capstone Writing Community
• Templates, rubrics
• Form and style guidance
• SMRT guides
• Doctoral Capstone webinar series
Audio: We do have some resources for specific populations, like I mentioned in the beginning. We have resources for multilingual students. I know a lot of our Walden students are multilingual and maybe have a page for them as well as mastering the mechanics. We have grammar modules and extensive – I’ll say those resources are not just for multilingual students. Plenty of native speakers can find them helpful as well. But they're particularly helpful if you're a multilingual student.
For our doctoral capstone students, we don't do paper reviews for those stages of your writing, but there is the Walden capstone writing community, and there are templates and rubrics on our form and style page. There are SMART guides and there's a doctoral capstone webinar series. So, there are resources out there specifically for that stage of your work that can be really helpful.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Questions: Ask Now or Later
writingsupport@mail.waldenu.edu • Live Chat Hours
Learn More:
“Building and Organizing Academic Arguments” and “Life Cycle of a Paper”
Make a Paper Review Appointment!
Assist students in becoming better academic writers by providing online, asynchronous feedback by appointment.
Audio: So, we do have some time here at the end. I want to let people type in any questions you have about our resources. And while you do that, I'm going to take another couple minutes to show you a few things on the website that I didn't have time for before because I wanted to make sure that we have time for all your questions.
Visual: Screen changes to the academicguides.waldenu.edu/formandstyle
Audio: We do have some students in their dissertation phase. If you're looking for that help with your capstone and your dissertation, you can click on our main web page, there's the doctoral capstone form and style link here. And you can go to that web page. This is the form and style review, talks about what the form and style is, different programs, starter kits, information on APA, writing, and what the editors do, those SMART guides, writing community, and information for your faculty. And they do have the editor office hours where you can ask specific questions as you're working on your dissertation itself. So that's a really great resource if you're in that phase of your work and you do have a chat service and email just for you. So that's great.
I wanted to show you what our chat looks like on the main Writing Center web page if you're not in the dissertation phase yet. Go ahead and scroll down on the left. You can see right now somebody is ready to chat live. You just click that and you'll be sent directly to an instructor. You can see our webinar calendar here. So, we have the upcoming webinars. You can register if you like the webinar format. You can click the webinar link here and see our calendar as well as our archive. Right? So, like in our scenarios maybe if you have questions about scholarly writing, click that tab, see all the different ones we have. And then you can watch a recording or if it's on our upcoming schedule, you can register and check that out.
Our paper reviews page is right here at the top. You can go to our myPASS system and set up your first appointment so we have kind of an overview of what to expect, how to make an appointment. We have videos to walk you through setting up your appointment and figuring all that out. That's really helpful.
And we do have information during your residency. We have that multilingual students page that I talked about a little bit.
And of course, we have just a general search bar. You can also check out specifically our blog if you scroll down here. We have our blog, a link to our social media, our pod cast.
Visual: Slide changes to the following: Questions
writingsupport@mail.waldenu.edu • Live Chat Hours
Learn More:
“Building and Organizing Academic Arguments” and “Life Cycle of a Paper”
Make a Paper Review Appointment!
Assist students in becoming better academic writers by providing online, asynchronous feedback by appointment.
Audio: All right. It sounds like we're maybe having some internet issues, so I went ahead and stopped sharing the web page. It looks like we don't have any questions in the Q&A, so I think we can wrap up a little bit early today. Do send us any questions that you have in writingsupport@mail.waldenu.edu or visit our live chat hours, and you can learn more through building and organizing academic arguments and life cycle of a paper. These are good kind of beginning webinars as you're working on formatting your writing in general. You can make one of those paper review appointments. Both Kacy and I are on there. And so, you are welcome to, you know, come in, schedule an appointment with us, give it a try, and see if it's beneficial to your learning if you're still in your course work or you have specific writing goals. Do go ahead and check out all these resources and if you're watching this as a recording or, you know, coming in later than ‑‑ you missed part of the presentation, then follow up with questions with us there. And I'll let Kacy wrap us up.
KACY: Thank you so much, Claire. Thank you all again for joining us. We hope to see you at another webinar or checking out more of our resources soon. Thanks so much. Have a great rest of your day.
[End of webinar]