Overview
The Writing and Communication Centre continues to work towards serving students with excellence, efficiency, and through valuable collaborations with other units.
This year-at-a-glance page for the 2023-24 academic year shares highlights and top-level metrics, followed by program areas summaries.
Student appointments
The WCC facilitated 4496 graduate and undergraduate student appointments in 2023-24, representing a slight 1% increase from the previous year.
Students brought a range of academic work to appointments. As shown below, essays and term papers represent 27% of all work discussed, and a range of disciplinary genres make up the remaining 73%.
Range of academic work
In appointments, students worked with WCC advisors and tutors on a range of skills and strategies. In almost all appointments, students received support with multiple items (n=9125 from 3629 post-appointment reports).
Students reported successful outcomes as a result of WCC appointments. At the very top of their list were improvements in confidence, proficiency, and well-being.
Peer tutors
Graduate and undergraduate students comprise the WCC peer tutor team, which is instrumental in appointment delivery and more. They engage in many student outreach and connection activities, including campus fairs, WCC pop-ups, speed tutoring events. They also make evening and weekend appointments possible, and in 23-24, they delivered 20% of our total appointments outside of university business hours.
WCC peer tutors are committed to providing truly excellent student support, They participate in intensive education and training throughout their time at the WCC to learn about many disciplines, genres, techniques, and supportive writing pedagogies.
The Write Spot
2023/24 also saw full-year delivery of services through The Write Spot in South Campus Hall. The Write Spot is a new WCC student-facing space, where we offer appointments, drop-ins, resources, general information, and community.
With a larger space for students to sit and write, and with two smaller bookable spaces for group writing, presentation practice, and private appointments, The Write Spot is a great place to focus and stay motivated.
Generative AI
A new area of support for the WCC that expanded rapidly in 2023-24 is the evolving sphere of Generative AI.
Recognizing that there are a range of integrations of GenAI into classrooms, from zero use to extensive experimentation, we provided guidance to students on how to use GenAI ethically and productively through a series of resources on using GenAI responsibly in the writing process.
Additionally, we responded to instructors' requests by developing a workshop for classes, and we partnered with the Library to develop a workshop for graduate students on using GenAI for literature reviews.
Support for multilingual students
Finally, in 2023-24, we delivered 48 sessions of English Conversation Circles (ECC) to 227 students, an increase of nearly 20% in participation. This is a valuable program, particularly for multilingual graduate students who want to practice speaking in English.
To ensure the WCC is offering the best possible programming for both undergraduate and graduate multilingual students, we began a review of these programs in 2024-25. We aim to work with campus partners to build on the successes of ECC with new programs next year.
Program Area Summaries
Undergraduate Student and Peer Tutor Programs 2023-2024
Undergraduate appointments increased slightly (3%) from the 2022-23. Peer Tutors played a large role in delivering undergrad appointments by hosting appointments in the evenings, on weekends, and in drop-in appointments at the Library and at the WCC.
To connect to undergraduate students, WCC piloted three new outreach initiatives. In Fall 2023, we hosted a speed tutoring booth in Dana Porter Library ahead of final exams. In Winter 2024, we organized six outreach booths in high-traffic areas in each Faculty to meet students where they are and demonstrate how we support disciplinary writing. Finally, we collaborated with campus partners to host two inaugural Peer Support Days in SLC, which emphasized our peer support services and engaged a diverse student body.
Peer Tutors
In 2023-24, we hired undergraduate and graduate peer tutors from all six Faculties, creating a team with an unprecedented diversity of academic backgrounds and lived experiences—an approach that we will maintain as our standard for future hiring. Undergraduate peer tutors also served as Peer Tutor Ambassadors at The Write Spot, managing front desk duties and promoting our services.
In 2023-24, Arts First peer tutors connected with nearly 98% (116 out of 119) of Arts First courses twice each term. We also expanded appointment options for Arts First students, with both in-person and online drop-ins, daytime appointments Monday to Friday, and evening appointments Sunday to Thursday.
In Spring 2023, peer tutors connected theory with practice by presenting at two conferences: UݮƵ Teaching and Learning Conference and the Canadian Writing Centres Conference.
Continuous Improvement
In Winter 2024, we introduced a Lead Tutor position to increase support and professionalization for the peer tutor team. The Lead Tutor worked with the Manager of Undergraduate and Peer Tutor Programs to draft peer tutor performance guidelines, conduct individual tutoring observations, and develop additional pedagogical workshops and resources.
Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Scholar Programs 2023-2024
We delivered nearly 2500 graduate appointments in 2023-2024, which was consistent with the previous year. A notable change was with a significant increase in the use of email appointments by graduate students. Graduate students and postdocs are also continuing to choose to work with graduate peer tutors, who offer evening and weekend appointments.
WCC staff also held 68 appointments with faculty in 2023-24 to support them in meeting their own writing and publication goals. These faculty appointments played a valuable role in supporting the careers of faculty from equity-deserving groups and shaping how faculty approach the writing process with their own students.
Speak Like a Scholar, WCC’s academic speaking and presentation intensive program, saw lower-than-usual participation in 2023-2024. However, 100% of feedback survey respondents indicated that the program helped them to meet their goals and that they were very likely to recommend it to others. This program has been re-named to “Design and Deliver Grad Studio” for 2024-2025.
Dissertation Boot Camp continued with consistent participation numbers in 2023-24, and 94% of survey respondents indicated that it helped them achieve the goals they described when they applied to participate. This program has been re-named to “Dissertation Boost Camp” for 2024-25.
In 2023-24, the total number of writing group sessions (447) held and number of users (1784) who participated in them increased from 2022-2023 (375 sessions and 1508 users). Although WCC-hosted cafés were reduced from 3 to 2 per week, the number of community-led groups and participants grew to compensate for that loss. Staff also co-authored a short chapter about the WCC’s innovative approach to writing groups for a forthcoming book about social writing programs for graduate students.
The WCC collaborated with many campus partners to support their programming and events, sometimes in partnership with the Library as co-facilitator. Collaborators include:
Projects and continuous improvement
We aim to provide access to graduate programs both in person and virtually. We have achieved this with Dissertation Boost Camp and Design and Deliver: Grad Studio. In 2023-2024, we completely re-imagined an online, asynchronous Rock Your Thesis program. When it launches in 2024-2025, students will be able to access the content at any time and we will “flip” the in-person workshop series to make it more hands on for participants.
In 2023-24, we continued consultations for the “Across the Life Cycle” project by meeting with faculty and graduate student representatives. We aim to propose a program that connects graduate students to the WCC early on in their degree programs and supports them through the entire “life cycle” of their degree program.
Workshops and Integrated Programs 2023-2024
Course Integrated Support
In 2023-24, WCC created 155 tailored and interactive workshops to support over 5000 students across all six faculties. We delivered workshops to a wide range of students, from those in large first-year courses to those in smaller graduate research groups. Customized workshops include:
- Health 107: Online tutorials on integrating & paraphrasing evidence, in collaboration with the Library
- Graduate research institutes, like WaterLeadership, and student groups, like Women in Engineering and the Science Graduate Student Association: Workshops on clearly communicating research for public talks, conferences, & grants.
When we develop tailored and interactive workshops for classes, students say:
“It was a great opportunity to practice the skills we were just taught right away, and be able to ask applied questions.”
“After my initial draft, I often have a hard time seeing what should be changed, but this workshop gave me strategies to use!”
WCC Workshops
We host over 38 interactive and asynchronous workshops on LEARN that help students become more familiar and confident in a variety of writing and communication genres. These workshops are available 24/7 for all students who self-register for our LEARN course. Workshops are:
- Genre-based: grant proposals, literature reviews, etc.
- Strategy-based: developing a thesis statement, revising a paper, etc.
- Skill-based: grammar studio, podcasting, etc.
In 2023-24, we heard from students and instructors who want guidance on poster design, so we created a new online workshop: Designing Academic Posters. We also significantly updated three more workshops to make them more engaging and interactive: Principles of Clarity in Scientific Writing, Design and Deliver I, and Revising Your Academic Paper.
Students who take our online workshops say:
“I love the interactive components of these workshops - makes it much more fun to go through them!”
“I liked how I was able to spend more time on topics that I was unsure of and less time on topics I was already familiar with.”
Continuous Improvement
This year, to help our two-person team deliver excellent workshops to as many students as possible, we developed a new workshop template process to help us create & customize these workshops more efficiently.
A newer project will update WCC online resources hosted on our website. In 2023-24, 63,000 users accessed our online resources. To make sure we deliver what students are looking for, we are updating their content and design to make them more engaging, accessible, and helpful, regardless of students’ familiarity with the conventions of academic writing in English.
