For Current Consultants

1. Read their form (as forwarded to you by Ruth) and download the student's submission as a Word doc. 

2. Copy the note linked here into their document.  Working in the Word draft, highlight, insert notes/comments, or add text in brackets (in a color other than black and preferably not red) to suggest changes, ask questions, or make notes for yourself (so long as you remember to go back through to revise notes for yourself into comments for the writer). 

1. • READ the whole paper all the way through! Just read, don’t comment yet!

   • Now, go through and add comments (and lots of questions!). Do NOT just copy-edit their paper. Instead, you might highlight a pattern of errors and include a comment explaining it. ("I've highlighted the places where you need to move the punctuation after a citation." or "Pay attention to commas in lists. I've highlighted a few missing commas."). Include links to helpful resources as needed. 

   • Try not to use “Track Changes,” and instead, use inserted comments or text in brackets in a different color. Rely on white space and formatting (contrast!) to make it easily discernible where your commentary starts and stops. The reason we encourage this approach is because Track Changes can subtly encourage directive editing from the consultant and passive acceptance from the writer, while in-line comments re-create more of a dynamic conversation. [Another reason not to do this in Google Docs: inserted marginal comments from Docs cannot be seen by the reader once you submit your response! Word doc comments will be sent to the reader.]

   • Be sure to revise the note you copied into the start of their paper so that it suits the changes you made. Focus on providing 1-3 BIG suggestions to include in your bulleted list in the note, and be sure you explain the colors or trends on which you commented in the text itself (for example, “I’ve highlighted APA formatting in teal and argument inconsistencies in yellow”).

3. SAVE the doc as "WCResponse_month-day_[TheirLastName]" (WCResponse_12-11_Jones). and then fill out the response form (also linked below) and upload the doc you commented on. Note that the *only* part of the form that goes to the writer is the attachment itself; they receive a friendly form email telling them that a consultant responded to their submission and the file is attached (they don’t get the summary report like the in-person sessions do). 

4. Save the writers' paper file in a designated (safe) folder in your Drive. Once you’ve uploaded the file to the form, Ruth and Emily (and the writer, of course) have access to it. Please delete the contents of your designated folder periodically or at least at the end of each term.