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WRITING INTENSIVE TUTORIAL SERVICES

The Idea Behind WITS

Writing Intensive Tutorial Services (WITS) was envisioned as a support service not just for students enrolled in WI courses, but for WI teachers as well.  The faculty who designed the WI program at MU recognized that teaching in the WI format would make special demands upon faculty.  Using writing to teach course concepts would increase teaching effectiveness, they believed, but it would also require teachers to devote hours to designing writing assignments, developing grading rubrics, and commenting on and grading student papers.   They envisioned WITS as a facility staffed by advanced graduate students from the disciplines who would be able think like historians, or animal scientists, or physicists, or literary scholars and would therefore be able to ask the kinds of questions and offer the kinds of advice that a tutor from outside the disciplines could not.  As much as possible, WITS was designed to offer discipline- and course-specific tutoring.

WITS tutors will

• visit WI classes, introduce themselves, and describe the kind help they can offer
• keep current with WI assignments and read supporting materials (as much as possible)
• talk with teachers and TAs about course goals and assignments
• assist students in any phase of the writing process

• help students learn to edit their own papers
• tailor their services to meet teachers’ and students’ needs
• develop and deliver content-based presentations in WI classes, if invited

WITS tutors will NOT

• claim expertise that they lack
• “fix” students’ papers
• criticize any WI teacher, assignment, paper comment, or TA
• discuss/predict grades or comment on grading procedures

Students may also submit essays to the Online Writery: https://web.missouri.edu/~umcaswritery/

If you have questions about WITS, please contact Rachel Harper, Director of the Writing Center: harperrp@missouri.edu

If you are interested in becoming a Writing Intensive Tutor* please submit a Writing Intensive Tutor Application.
*This is a TA position and only a few individuals are hired. Students applying for this position must be enrolled in a graduate level program and must possess excellent communication and writing skills.
Please note that additional materials must be submitted with this application.