The Beginning of My Odyssey

I am finally posting my researching progress so this post will be a compilation of everything that happened until today! I was indecisive when it came to actually choosing an issue. All I knew was that I wanted to do something Writing Center based. I originally decided on the comparison of STU's UWC teaching methods and other UWCs. I wanted to find out if effective teaching, or should I say tutoring methods, would change and/or vary according to situation. STU has a lot of ESOL students. I wanted to compare UWCs that do not have a large percentage of ESOL students to STU.

However, this topic was too large. I kept on brainstorming and came up with the question: do UWCs affect retention? Once again, this topic was too broad and I had to narrow it down. Now I am in this state of brain stagnancy. I have many ideas that lead to no particular direction. I thought researching retention would help me find a more specific area to focus my multi-genre research paper on.

I went to a few websites and used the search engine for retention. I found a few books that might be of use. I have to get them from the library. One of the sites I went to explain the key factors influencing retention: academic assistance, mentoring, developing friendships and other peer relationships. The UWC would fall under the category of academic assistance but maybe under mentoring, and friendships as well. I want to get information on what the freshman think. The UNI students and ENG 100s would be good to interview. Also, I want to get the STU retention rates. Maybe compare it to other schools? I think if I compare STU UWC with a non UWC containing school and look at the retention rates, it would give some information. Maybe look into FIU and their new UWC. Why did they build it? Is it helping? Interview some students to see if they go, if they find it beneficial, etc. ENG 101 people would be good too. Maybe they had ENG 100 last year.

http://www.sjsu.edu/writingcenter/abstracts/
http://writinglabnewsletter.org/archives/v22/22-2.htm

I have to check out these books:

Griswold, G. (2003, December 22). Writing centers: The student retention connection. Academic
Exchange Quarterly, pp. 1-8.

Poziwilko, L. (1997, October). Writing centers, retention, and the institution: A fortuitous nexus.The Writing Lab Newsletter, 22(2), 1-4.

Simpson, J. (1991). The role of writing centers in student retention programs. In R. Wallace & J. Simpson (Eds.), The writing center: New directions (pp. 102-109). New York: Garland Publishing, Inc.