Writing group offers assistance

Among the plethora of remedies available to students suffering the pain of final exams -- coffee, Red Bull, caffeine pills, ginkgo biloba -- exists a healthier choice for students attempting to cram three months worth of knowledge into five double-spaced pages. The Campus Writing Program, which provides services such as Writing Tutorial Services, is available to both students and faculty through the end of the semester. \nFounded 15 years ago, the program consists of two professional staff members and 39 student tutors and has tutorial service locations in Ballantine Hall and the Herman B Wells Main Library, as well as Briscoe, Forest and Teter Quads. \nStudents using the program's free tutorial service can chat one-on-one with a tutor about concerns they have with their papers. Although tutors do not proofread papers for errors or mark mistakes, they do provide verbal assistance with paper organization and grammar. \nSenior Megan Schutz, who used the writing tutorial services her freshman year, said writing a paper during finals week is even more difficult than usual. \n"You're worrying about four tests all at the same time," Schutz said. "It's super-stressful." \nLaura Plummer, director of the Campus Writing Program, said the service sees a definite increase in traffic during finals. \n"Although use patterns fluctuate each year, a general trend is that the writing tutorial services sees the greatest number of students in the weeks around midterms and during the last two weeks of classes," she said.\nStudents are not the only ones who feel the burden of finals week. Journalism instructor Nancy Metz said finals week can be equally as stressful for faculty who have to grade student work. \n"Depending on the teaching load and type of final, it is stressful," Metz said. "You have a lot of work to do and a limited amount of time to do it. It's sort of the same pressure that students feel to get work done." \nIn addition to tutorial services for students, the Campus Writing Program provides faculty with a number of resources, including consultation, training and grants. \n"At the onset of the semester, the CWP does a lot of work with groups of new AIs," Plummer said. "We talk about how to establish grading criteria and how to comment effectively and efficiently on student work. We also talk about what goes into designing a clear and productive writing assignment." \nAccording to the Campus \nWriting Program Web site, \nwww.indiana.edu/~cwp, the program offers up to five grants of $1,500 every summer to faculty who "design undergraduate courses that use writing in innovative and fruitful ways."\nIn addition to providing grants, Plummer said the program also provides in-classroom presentations for teachers who want to emphasize the importance of writing well. \n"I probably do about 15 to 20 such sessions in classes to talk about how to integrate sources well and correctly and how to avoid plagiarism," she said. \nPerhaps more important to faculty during finals week, however, is the fact that the program can aid professors and instructors in setting up a criteria for grading papers correctly and efficiently. \n"This work often takes the form of 'norming' sessions, where we meet with the professor and his or her graders and discuss a particular set of papers, establish a grading scale and identify benchmark papers that illustrate the general criteria for a particular grade," Plummer said. "We also often talk about commenting and how to mark sentence-level and grammatical errors while grading."\nAlthough faculty often contact the Campus Writing Program earlier in the semester, Plummer urges anyone struggling under the pressure of finals to contact the program for a "norming" session. \n"Those faculty who are staring at a large set of papers are welcome to call," Plummer said. \n-- Contact Staff Writer Hannah Lodge at hjlodge@indiana.edu.