CONFERENCES
JUSTICE-GUIDED TRAINING, RESPONSE, AND REVISION IN WRITING INSTRUCTION AND CONSULTING
International Writing Centers Association Annual Conference (October 2021)
Response guides and localized training suggest how to give feedback to students, from avoiding error correction to using nondirective language to many other recommendations that are steeped with attention to social and linguistic justice, ethics, agency, and responsibility to students and their writing. However, do our response practices follow our training? How do students perceive such feedback? And does such feedback result in student revision? This presentation attempts to answer these questions by offering key preliminary themes from a mixed methods study of instructor and writing consultant margin comments and students’ resulting revision activities and perceptions.
1. RESPONDING TO INCARCERATED WRITERS: EXPANDING THE PEDAGOGICAL COMMONPLACE WITH SITUATED ASYNCHRONOUS STRATEGIES (WORKSHOP)
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2. RETURNING, BUT FREE: NAVIGATING OUR ROLE AS TEACHERS AND SCHOLARS IN PRISON SETTINGS (STANDING GROUP WORKSHOP)
Conference on College Composition and Communication's Annual Convention (April 2021)
In the first workshop, Laura Hardin Marshall, Alexander Ocasio, and several University Writing Services (UWS) consultants offer participants the opportunity to expand the ways they approach feedback and the writers to whom they offer it. Laura and Alex discuss responding to writers and giving feedback, specifically how they used composition, prison, and writing center pedagogies to shape the response strategies UWS uses in their partnership with the incarcerated writers of SLU's Prison Program. Participants break out into sessions to discuss and practice those strategies on a student sample. (While this workshop was initially accepted, it was unfortunately cut when the conference went virtual and the program reduced.)
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In the second workshop, Laura joined various scholars and speakers in discussing important issues and current projects in prison pedagogy. Laura discussed ways that writing centers can create partnerships with their prison education programs and the different opportunities writing centers have to work with this population of writers.
1. WRITING CENTERS IN PRISON EDUCATION (STANDING GROUP WORKSHOP)
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2. EXPANDING PRISON EDUCATION AND ACADEMIC PARTNERSHIPS: WRITING CENTER COLLABORATION WITH INCARCERATED STUDENTS (PANEL)
Conference on College Composition and Communication’s Annual Convention (March 2020)
In the first presentation, Laura Hardin Marshall and Paul Lynch discuss how writing center and prison program administrators worked together to form the partnership to provide writing support for incarcerated writers. Laura discusses the logistics of forming the partnership and the basic consulting strategies developed for this student population.
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In the second presentation, Assistant Coordinator of University Writing Services Laura Hardin Marshall, Coordinator of UWS Alexander Ocasio, Associate Profess Joya Uraizee, and consultant Haris Fazlić discuss their experiences forming, using, and consulting with the UWS and SLU Prison Program partnership. This partnership connects incarcerated writers to composition support and the larger SLU academic community. The presentation elaborates on the logistics of forming the partnership and consulting strategies (touched on in the first presentation) and also shares students' use of the offered services and how consultants worked with the students.
PROMOTING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND CONSULTANT ARTISTRY THROUGH FACILITATIVE FEEDBACK
International Writing Centers Association Annual Conference (October 2019)
Laura Hardin Marshall offers asynchronous response strategies emphasizing facilitative feedback. This response style presents writing advice in ways that encourage students to make decisions and remain active in the revision process.
THE GREAT DIVIDE: RECKONING THE DISTANCE IN COMPOSITION FEEDBACK
Textual Revolutions, English Department (December 2019) & the 26th Annual Graduate Student Association Research Symposium
What are the complications causing the distance between students and those who give them feedback? Using Thomas Kent's paralogic rhetoric and research on revision, Laura Hardin Marshall discusses the divide in understanding between listener/reader and speaker/writer, a divide that requires guesswork to bridge. She explores that divide and considers writing consultants as a largely untapped but potentially significant waypoint in navigating the divide between teacher and student. Tracing these distances would help us account for some of the puzzle about what happens when students receive feedback.
GENRE WRITING IN CONSULTATIONS
Gateway Writing Center Association Annual Conference (February 2019)
Laura Hardin Marshall discusses the ways that genre complicates consultations and consultant/student identities. Genre offers unique opportunities for students and consultants to share and swap roles as experts for an enriched consultation. Laura also offers strategies for handling unpredictable situations in consultations, particularly those presented by students working in a genre with which neither the student or the consultant is unfamiliar.
