In my role as Director of Publicity at the Writing Center (George Mason University), I presented the following paper at the annual conference of the Southeastern Writing Center Association (SWCA) on April 23, 1992.

Going the Distance: Using New Technologies to Promote the Writing Center on Campus and in the Community

After being involved with the publicity of a writing center for the past three years as well as discovering what other writing centers do to bring in more clients, I've concluded that most writing centers waste their most valuable unnatural resource: their computers. Be it a Macintosh or an IBM clone, the majority of computers in writing centers tend to be used — if at all — for drafting memos, helping tutors finish their papers for classes or, on occasion, helping students work on a paper in a specialized “writing with computers” session. This may not be true for your writing center, but if it is — and I suspect that it's probably more true than a lot of directors would like to admit — I want to give you ideas on getting more mileage out of your system. In particular, I want to discuss ways of using your computer to help you bring in more clients more frequently.

Some of my ideas may be “old hat” to you; some of them may be entirely new. You may already do all the things I'll discuss. The personal computer has done a lot for instructors of writing, but it certainly hasn't made them equals in knowing what to do with them. Some writing teachers have turned into bona-fide hackers while others are only concerned with being able to rewrite a sentence without having to retype an entire page. It's to the latter people I'm speaking. I want to share with you some techniques to promote a writing center.  All you'll need is access to an IBM (or Macintosh or “clone” computer), a laser printer and a hookup into the university's telecommunication system — all of which are affordable to any writing center and all of which can help bring people to a writing center — after all, what's the point of the pedagogy and debates unless we have the tutees to make it all matter?

First I'll explore the ways you can use your computer to manufacture traditional publicity tools such as newsletters and brochures. I'll then discuss ways to use your computer's telecommunications capabilities to expand your client base. I'll finish by looking at the possibility of using your computer for a one-on-one conference with a tutee in another location at his or her own terminal.

I. Combining publicity with technology

Publicity is good. And it's good to have more clients coming through the door — so many that you're overbooked and the university, or other sponsors, will free up more money for you because you're so popular. Good publicity strategies are many, but the best will take the three following ideas into account:

1.   Know yourself. By that I mean know exactly what you and your tutors are capable of in terms of numbers of sessions, outside workshops, time constraints and so on.

2.   Who you clients already are and, most importantly,

3.   Who your clients aren't, but you hope will be.

If ten thousand people attend your university and only two hundred of them use the writing center in a given semester, chances are you're not promoting your writing center to the fullest. If you can spare only so much time, money or energy as to send out memos only to members of the English Department, how can you make sure those English teachers are actively promoting them? Well, if you ask each client what instructors he or she is working with, you'll find certain teachers' names repeat again and again while some names never come up. One reason why some English teachers fail to promote a writing center is because they perceive your flyers and memos as another piece of junk mail in their box. This may have nothing to do with the quality of your flyer, but rather that there are so many flyers that go around a university that yours become “just one more.” One way your computer can give you an advantage is a feature that any good word processor will have: “mail merge.”  “Mail merge” is the feature sweepstakes companies use to personalize mass mailings. You know, those “You, John Q. Public, have won!” letters. Dare to write form letters, then “personalize” them, and send them to individual teachers telling them about hours and so forth. Don't send them to every teacher — concentrate on the ones who never seem to let students know about the writing center. Chances are they'll feel a bit more singled out, possibly even flattered. Even if they see through your ruse, remember that the very novelty of a “mail merged” document on campus will work in your favor. That teacher will remember the writing center. If you feel you're risking “negative” publicity, remember that the teachers you've targeted aren't actively promoting of the writing center. You haven't “lost” them and you might just win a few over.

The one thing that computers have made incredibly easy is the production of publications. A laser printer, a copy shop and the world of publications is yours for next to no money. Go ahead, do it all: flyers, brochures and newsletters. They can be your best “front man.” Just remember that each medium has its demands. Those demands, in short, are that brochures are forever, but newsletters aren't. You might change a brochure every few years or when your center has to move because the college has given you more space, but for the most part, think of a brochure as a one-shot deal, a time capsule version of your writing center. You want to emphasize where you are, what you do, who you help and — don't forget — what your phone number is. If you can afford to splurge on any aspect of publicity, a well-done brochure is the place to spend; however, a well-designed black ink on white paper brochure can be as effective as a four-color, high-gloss one, so don't be deterred by limited financial resources. Make sure that the brochure, whatever the design, reflects the spirit of your writing center. A rule of thumb: when in doubt, aim for the serious and sedate rather than the foolish and trivial.

On the other hand, newsletters are exceedingly inexpensive to produce and give you an open forum in every issue. You can let the world know who your tutors are, what you do in the writing center, special projects you're involved in, special holiday hours — all those things which change during the year. Think of your newsletter as being a mutable version of your brochure. When you start publishing your newsletter, make a decision as to how often it will appear — and stick to it. If you can only handle putting the newsletter out once every four months, then make it a seasonal publication. If you have the staff and energy, make it a monthly — but keep to your schedule: if people know when to look for your publication, the chances are that they will. And, by the way, who are these “people”?  Everyone should get the newsletter and the brochure:  students, staff, faculty, administration, chairs, deans, alumni and, of course, the media — the campus newspaper, campus TV and radio stations, community newspapers, major newspapers and TV stations.

And speaking of media — dare to send out press releases. Contrary to what some believe, people in media really do read them. They may only spend ten seconds on each one, but they read them all the same. If you have a tutor with an especially interesting background or you're holding a workshop that ties in with a community event, put a release out. If you're offering a specialized service, like conferencing on computer networks — which I'll discuss later in this paper —  put out a release. Remember, the more “new” the news is, the better the chance of a follow-up story.

Word of mouth is always the best publicity source. And one of the best ways we've gotten good word of mouth is from our series of writing center handouts. If your writing center doesn't have handout sheets for students, use your computer and start generating them. Our own handouts on topics like “punctuation” or “writing on literature” or “methods of research” (see appendix for an example) are quite popular and bring repeat business to the center, sometimes to get another handout, sometimes for a session. We've discovered that students tend to share their handouts with other students, so we put our name on all our handouts and thus the center's name is carried to students who may not yet use the writing center for tutorials but might stop by to get handouts like the ones their friends have. Once they're in the writing center, we give them a pamphlet that explains what the writing center is. They just might decide to start taking advantage of the center's services. The one danger of doing only a few handouts is the possibility of students seeing the writing center as “the grammar center.”  Be sure to do a variety of handouts, including some that emphasize the writing process, to de-emphasize the grammar aspect.

In general, the one rule to work from in deciding on publicity strategies is to develop consistency in approaches. By consistency, I mean that materials from a single writing center should look like they come from a single writing center. If you've designed a logo, use it on all materials that leave the center. If you write press releases, they should follow a similar format each time. If you're breaking up promotional work among tutors, put each tutor onto his or her own special assignments. Let Bob take charge of all the press releases while Jenny writes the newsletter. And remember the most important rule for any aspect of publicity involving a writing center, use standard grammatical English. Nothing will more quickly undermine your efforts to get more clients to your writing center than a misplaced modifier or misspelled word on a press release or brochure. After all, if your writing isn't up to standard, how can you help others? 

As strong as they can be, publications are only one aspect of a computer's capabilities in promoting the writing center. The advent of computer networks and telecommunications offers a whole new range of possibilities for the writing center to increase its client populations, which brings us to:

II. Using telecommunications technology

Similar to the traditional media of newsletters and brochures created through new technologies, computer networks offer writing centers a broad audience; however, unlike traditional media, telecommunications technology opens up a base of potential clients who might not otherwise be aware of a center's existence. A university's telecommunications users includes people in such disciplines as business, sciences, visual arts and communications. Network access is growing, the costs of both labor and materials for publicizing on them is significantly cheaper. The novelty of a network as a publicity device will pay off a writing center's investment in getting “hooked” into a network.

By the word network, I mean a system of wiring and software that will allow a user to “talk” with users at other computers. There are several types of computer networks. If your writing center is lucky enough to be associated with a university or college that has a computer science degree, you'll most likely find a mainframe system called a VAX. Provided your center's computer is hooked in, you can be part of the VAX system. Usually one applies for an account through the university's computer science department and away you go. The VAX, as well as other types of networking systems like a Local Area Network, provides a communications network that allows several kinds of interaction. The three methods that concern me in this presentation are:

1. “bulletin boards”

2. electronic mail, more popularly known as “E-mail” and

3. “real-time” interaction

A “bulletin board” allows a user to send messages that can be read by any user. “E-Mail” allows users to communicate either on a one-to-one basis or by sending out electronic “carbon copies” to a group of users. Telecommunication systems can also be used to have two or more parties communicate to each other in “real time.”  What I mean by “real time” is that the users actually read what other writes as he or she types it — in short, a telephone call that's written rather than spoken. Each of these three ways of communicating can be a boon to a small writing center. The use of telecommunications saves time, money, energy and, importantly, allows the writing center to be very “hip” in recycling the same old publicity ideas in new ways.

Let's consider the “bulletin board” first. The bulletin board is an electronic equivalent to the old cork and metal one that hangs in hallways all across the nation. The main benefit of an electronic bulletin board is that the audience is a very different one from the kind who walk down the hall between classes. A side benefit is that none of these hall-walking people can rip up the flyer you just spent one hour creating and twelve cents having copied. The bulletin boards allow to you post information about scheduling appointments, upcoming workshops (for which they can sign-up via the network) and the availability of writing center handouts. In general, the bulletin board is a novel way to make announcements, and, according to Systems Analyst Philip C. Katner of the Department of State, it's an “increasing effective strategy” in making new contacts on a university level.

On the other hand, the “e-mail” system can be one of the most effective ways to get people into the writing center via telecommunications. Write an announcement about an upcoming workshop or some other bit of writing center news and then e-mail that news to appropriate parties. In other words, we write a message once and then “broadcast” that announcement to professors teaching courses whose students might benefit from such a workshop. An important aspect of publicity, as I've mentioned before, is knowing and targeting your audience. Find out which teachers are teaching what at your university in a given semester, then get their electronic addresses and use them. Once you've got this bit of work done, the rest is simple.  

For example, let's say you're doing a workshop on documenting sources in APA style. You know that not many English majors are going to be interested, but you certainly want to target Psychology students. First, create a boilerplate announcement that reads something like:

 

Professor —,

Thought you'd be interested in knowing that the Writing Center will hold a workshop on using APA style for documenting sources. Do you have some students who could use some more study on the subject?  Feel free to have them sign up either in person or through the VAX. It's going to be held on such and such a date and time. If you have any questions, just e-mail or call and I'll be glad to help.

Thanks,

Cindy W. Center

 

The advantage of such an approach is not only in the seeming specificity of a generic message, but in the restrictions of the e-mail system itself. Because of the very nature of a paperless electronic communications system, e-mailboxes aren't overflowing with junk mail or complimentary copies of instruction manuals the way that a professor's physical mailbox most likely is. Because the whole e-mail concept is still relatively new, most people avidly read all of their e-mail. Thus your electronic message will get more attention than it would if you were to toss a flyer, or even a mail-merged memo, in the teacher's box. The one proviso on this is to go easy on the number of messages you send to the same teachers. Don't send announcements too frequently or else your messages will start to be treated just like junk mail.  Because the teacher takes the memo more “seriously,” he or she usually spends more time promoting it to students and, best of all, e-mails other teachers and students and lets them know about the news in question. It's not just word of mouth;  it's word of mouth and word of wire. The unorthodoxy of the approach piques greater interest more easily and the result is a greater number of clients and bigger attendance at workshops.

Another way that writing centers can benefit from using e-mail is by using the system as a “hot line” for faculty. As faculty get more and more involved in using computers for research, they discover that, for example, they can look to see if a book is in the library before bothering to saunter over there or that they can get an article on-line and actually use quotes from it without having to retype the sentences in question. Once they start using a computer's telecommunication properties, there's no going back to old methods without a bit of grumbling. That's where the writing center's ability to use e-mail comes in. It gets more faculty involved in using the center's resources. At our university, as I suspect is the case with most universities, there is a core of faculty who take the writing center seriously and do their utmost to promote it while the rest — despite our finest publicity efforts — either see it as the place to send students they don't have time to work with or, more sadly, ignore it entirely. With a bit of promotion, however, the writing center can, for some professors, become another area of information and, possibly, research.

Imagine a professor needs to check an aspect of a citation method or a particular comma usage. The writing center's e-mail system can act the way a “hot line” would. Those of you who have writing centers with telephone hot lines know the amount of effort it takes to explain how something should “look” on the page. With solution on the screen, the answer is clearer. You could expand the computer hot line services to include students, staff and people outside the university community. You can also create computer versions of your handouts to send to students or professors on request.

In terms of research, you can make your computer home to bibliographies that professors may download (i.e., pick up electronically) on different topics. Suppose a teacher e-mailed asking, “I have an learning disabled student in my class. Can you suggest any articles to help me be more effective as a teacher?”  To be able to send that instructor a bibliography (especially one that's annotated) in seconds is not only helpful, but quickly pays off in repeat business and good word of mouth.

A third method of communications on networks is messaging in “real time.” In other words, using the network to speak to another person at another terminal. The two parties write to each other in a keyboard-and-monitor equivalent of a telephone call; however, with the aspect of writing that goes into real time messaging, the idea of increasing writing skills through computer conversation becomes possible. And the possibilities are intriguing and, perhaps, controversial in the use of networks for “live” tutoring sessions: that's to say, a tutorial session without the client's being in the room. Before you remark, as one instructor of my acquaintance already has, “But wouldn't that run a risk of implying that the conference is primarily about the text rather than the writer?”, consider a scenario where tutor and tutee hold a session in front of a computer. The tutee comes in with text on disk, brings up the text on screen, then reads the essay to the tutor. They discuss the work and the tutee makes changes on the screen. He experiments, modifies, saves copies to compare versions later on. Surely all the benefits of a one-on-one session are there, even though no piece of paper was ever seen. What would be lost if that same tutee sent the paper to the tutor's computer, had the tutor read it, then they both got on the VAX using its “messaging” capabilities to discuss the paper and then the tutee makes the changes? The one-to-one interaction is there, even if the body and vocal cues that make an in-person conference easy (and sometimes equally difficult) are gone. The colleague I mentioned before is right in suggesting that the danger of the conference becoming writing-centered instead of writer-centered is real; however, on these same lines, note Marilyn Cooper and Cynthia Selfe's article on the uses of computer conferences as a new tool for leaning in the December 1990 issue of College English. In that article, “Computer Conferences and Learning:  Authority, Resistance and Internally Persuasive Discourse,” the authors state, “Although computer conferences have their own problems, such environments, when they are shaped by the correct theoretical perspectives, can encourage attempts to re-construct and rethink existing social structures and visions” (Cooper and Self 867). Although they are speaking primarily of the classroom in their paper, they are on the mark in seeing the computer conference as a valid learning experience in the same manner that the one-on-one session itself is.

I suggest that the computer conferencing session could be used as a corollary to sessions with a student who is using the writing center on a regular basis. To have students use a computer-based conference without seeing tutors in person at other times would be, I fear, the equivalent of having a tutee fax his paper to the writing center and then having the tutor fax the paper back with corrections — a 1990’s version of the “doctor's office” paradigm of a “writing lab.”  As an antidote to that possibility, the computer session could be framed in terms of a special “On-line Hot Line” that could help with brainstorming ideas in a visual equivalent of a telephone call or perhaps a student who has worked with a tutor might want to share a draft of a paper he has brought in on previous occasions and has very specific questions based on the conclusions reached in his other sessions. The ability to do computer conferences would certainly be worthy news for a newsletter or a press release, but the value of computer conferences goes far beyond mere novelty. While I don't believe that it will be a replacement for the in-person one-on-one conference, I think that it will increasing become an adjunct to the one-on-one conference and thus valuable as a tool for learning as much as the use of word processing programs in composition already has.   

In this paper, I've only scratched the surface of possibilities in using the computer as a tool for promoting the writing center on campuses and in the community. Computers are an amazing resource whose potential is limited only by your imagination.

Appendix:  Sample of a GMU Writing Center Handout

Research Methods:  An Overview

Your objective as a researcher is to arrive at an informed judgment based on the best available information. That information can come from your from your own original experiments, analyses, memories or surveys, or it can be based on original work done by others.   

Original work done by you or by others is called primary research. The materials that record the results of that work — notes, laboratory records, data analyses — are primary research data. When you draw on the works of others, whether published or derived from interviews, you are doing secondary research.

Some approaches to research are:

Libraries:

  • Reference Staff

  • Card Catalogue

  • Reference Books and Periodicals

  • Bibliographic Index/Book Review

  • Citation Index

  • Review Article

  • Computerized Information Searches

  • Computerized Library Networks

Beyond the Library:

  • Organizations and Associations

  • Foundations

  • Think Tanks

  • University Research Centers / Departments

  • Government Agencies

  • Special Libraries

  • Industry and Field Directories

  • People

 

Courtesy:  The George Mason University Writing Center

Works Cited

Cooper, Marilyn and Cynthia Selfe.  “Computer Conferences and Learning:  Authority, Resistance and Internally Persuasive Discourse.”  College English. December 1990,  867.

Katner, Philip C. Interview. Conducted by the author on April 15, 1992.

NOTE (from 1992): A Local Area Network, more popularly known as LAN, allows the same types of communication as a VAX, but operates through telephone wiring rather than sharing information through a central unit as a VAX does.