The Boston College Writing Fellows Program, founded by English Prof. Paula Mathieu in cooperation with the Connors Family Learning Center, has supported undergraduate writing in core courses at Boston College since 2004. The program pairs graduate students who are trained to respond to undergraduate writing with faculty members from any discipline who want to focus more attention on student writing in their course. As the program continued to grow and serve more students and faculty, however, it became clear that the program could be enhanced by using instructional technologies, and Prof. Mathieu received an Academic Technology Innnovation Grant to pursue this goal.
With the help of an Instructional Design consultant and project oversight by Instructional Design and eTeaching Services, the Writing Fellows program began using Blackboard Vista, Microsoft Word's comment feature, and audio recording tools to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the Writing Fellows program. These tools also facilitate and capture the interactions between the Writing Fellows and students which are archived in a website where these records and other resources of the program are stored for research, training, and program evaluation. Incorporating these tools into the workflow of teaching and learning not only helps improve student writing, but it also helps build a more sustainable foundation for the program as it continues to grow.
Project Team
Faculty Lead
- Paula Mathieu Dept. of English (A&S)
Program Faculty
- Sue Barrett Connors Family Learning Center
Instructional Design Consultant
- Marla Derosa Dept. of English (A&S)
Project Manager
- Tim Lindgren Instructional Designer IDeS