University Writing Center

A pilot study redesigns data collection to reflect increasing diversity in student populations and to improve writing center consultations and campus outreach efforts. The Undergraduate Writing Center (UWC) at The University of Texas at Austin (UT) performs roughly 11,500 writing consultations each year. In addition to providing one-on-one consultations with undergraduate students, a considerable amount of activity happens behind the scenes. For example, project groups are a mainstay of the UWC and are an integral aspect of work we do beyond consulting. Up until now, the Research & Publications Project Group has primarily analyzed data the UWC collects from students’ Intake Forms. The Intake Form asks students to report basic information regarding their course prefix, their instructor’s information, their assignment, their writing process, and their ESL status. While these forms lend valuable information about the classes for which students request to receive help and the types of problems students encounter with their writing, there is a tremendous amount of information we do not collect (and therefore do not know) about the students who walk through our doors.