Conferencing
Conferencing is a great opportunity to meet with students at any point during their writing processes in order to support, course correct, offer feedback, and get to know your students. While conferencing is time consuming, it can significantly decrease the need for marginal and end comments on final papers. Many instructors say that conferences offer more powerful learning than any other educational scenario!
At its core, conferencing is a lot like what our writing coaches do in the Writing Center because they offer feedback to writers (rather than mark up writing), and because their main goal is to improve writing skills. Improving the writing is secondary.
Conferences are also a surefire way to up IDEA scores!
Click on the video below to tune into a professional development meeting on Conferences hosted by the Writing Program in October 2020. You can hear from Dr. Diana Glyer and Dr. Bradley McCoy as they share helpful some thoughts about conferencing based on their many years of teaching experience, as well as practical tips for how to actually schedule conferences using Google calendar.
Before conferences start
Time spent preparing your students before they come to your office or meet you on Cougar Walk will make your conferences as successful as possible.
First, pass around a conference signup sheet. You might also scan the filled-out document and post it on Sakai in order to avoid fielding questions about when each student's conference is scheduled.
Second, hand out conference instructions. These will vary based on your preferences and purposes, but they are typically about one page long.
Consider posting the signup sheet outside your door. You might also post a note like the one on the right.
Try to set up the conference space so that you and the student can both look at the same paper together. In the Writing Center, students sit at a 90-degree angle to coaches.
Post the Ten Writing Priorities (PDF) in a visible spot, and/or have copies of the Ten Writing Priorities handout available. (They are free in all of the Writing Center's locations.)
During the conference
Instructors, like writing coaches, should engage student writers in conversations aimed at helping them to improve their own writing. These conversations take many different forms and depend upon the instructor working to understand what the writer is asking for, what he or she needs, and how best to help without taking over the writing project.
01-Ten Writing Priorities.pdfThe Ten Writing Priorities (PDF) can be a helpful starting place. In this technique, developed by Diana Glyer, you might start by asking students how they are feeling about their draft and then asking them to tell you their thesis. If they are unsure, the first priority (the thesis or message) may be where you spend the whole conference. If their thesis is solid, you and the student move down the list until you find a priority that needs attention. Avoid focusing on sentence-level concerns such as grammar and punctuation before establishing global concerns such as organization. Students may feel defeated when they edit and proofread a paragraph to perfection and then have to cut it when they reorganize.
Ideally, the students will let you know what they need out of a conference, giving you the opportunity to coach the student from the sidelines rather than getting in the game.
When possible, the student should lead the session and talk more than the instructor. The instructor should point out aspects that are working well, ask questions, and guide the student to develop solutions. The instructor may also model occasionally ("I might write something like…") or offer suggestions. Always try to offer at least two options rather than only one so that the student still has the agency of choice. Try to avoid making suggestions sound like sure-fire solutions. The goal is to have the student develop strategies that work for him or her.
Remember that conferences are collaborative. The instructor and the student are working together with two common goals in mind: helping the student become a better writer and improving the piece of writing. If you and the student want to read sections of the paper, consider having the student read aloud. Often the student will catch his or her own errors and come up with ideas while reading.
End the session with one or two next steps for the writer to work on for the next draft. Ideally, the student will decide on the steps and write them down.