Last Updated July 2022
A Brief Introduction to WriteAway
WriteAway Partners
WriteAway Governance
Listservs
Responsibilities of the Institutional Coordinator
Asynchronous Tutoring: How it Works
Tutor Training
Key Tutor Documents
Tutoring Platform
Accounts
Reports
Managing Backlogs
Bounced Student Emails
Evaluation Framework
A Brief Introduction to WriteAway
WriteAway provides online writing support for undergraduate students at participating institutions. Qualified tutors from each of the participating institutions staff the service and provide feedback on students' draft writing assignments.
WriteAway Partners
Through collaboration, cost-sharing, and coordination of existing infrastructure and resources, WriteAway provides a service far beyond what any individual institution could offer on its own. WriteAway is part of the BC Electronic Library Network’s suite of virtual learning services and is a collaborative partnership of the participating institutions.
The WriteAway Administrative Centre
The WriteAway Administrative Centre is hosted by BC ELN and is housed at the Simon Fraser University Burnaby campus. The WriteAway Administrative Centre is staffed part-time (3 days/week). The Administrative Centre:
- Facilitates communication (e.g. between partner institutions, WriteAway groups)
- Provides platform and service training
- Supports committee governance
- Provides project management and support, marketing materials, and communications infrastructure
WriteAway Governance
Oversight for WriteAway is provided by the WriteAway Advisory Committee. More information about governance is available here.
Listservs
WriteAway has two main operational listservs (one for institutional coordinators, one for tutors), governance listservs (e.g. WriteAway Advisory Committee), and project specific listservs.
Institutional Coordinator Listserv (coordinators@writeaway.ca)
Members: Current institutional coordinators and their back-ups, WriteAway Administrative Centre staff
Purpose: For all members to communicate administrative items such as set-up, training, platform information, managing backlogs, promotion, and scheduling. This is a closed list; only members can post to it.
Tutor Listserv (tutors@writeaway.ca)
Members: Current WriteAway tutors, WriteAway Administrative Centre staff
Purpose: For all members to communicate items related to staffing the service, such as training, shift swap requests, platform information and service updates. This is a closed list; only members can post to it.
Responsibilities of the Institutional Coordinator
Each WriteAway participating institution is responsible for ensuring the roll out of
WriteAway services at the campus level, a process which should be addressed at several points during each semester.
One person (and a back-up) should be designated as the primary institutional contact to the WriteAway Administrative Centre. This person will be responsible for forwarding messages from the WriteAway Administrative Centre to the relevant person/s at their institutions.
A full list of institutional coordinator responsibilities (which can be fulfilled by one or more people at the institution) is available here.
Asynchronous Tutoring: How it Works
A student at a participating institution must submits their assignment or question via writeaway.ca/connect. The following information is required to submit a response
- Post-secondary Institution
- First Name
- Last Name
- Email address
Students must accept the WriteAway Terms and Conditions when they submit an assignment or question.
A tutor at any of the participating institutions will select the submission from a queue, provide written guidance in the form of embedded comments, and upload their response to tutoring platform. The student receives the tutor’s response via an email generated by the tutoring platform, with the response file attached.
Tutor Training
WriteAway tutor training includes the activities listed on this page.
Training activities should be completed in order. Tutors should expect to devote approximately 5-6 hours to complete the different training components.
Please Note: to complete training, tutors develop a sample response and begin a customized template. The sample response can be claimed from the training queue of the tutoring platform. The WriteAway Coordinator reviews the sample response and customized template and provides feedback on these to the institutional coordinator.
Key Tutor Documents
The written guidance that tutors provide students has a suggested framework so that there is a degree of consistency across all responses. There are two primary documents used to guide tutors through responding to asynchronous submissions:
1) The Tutor Response Template: Offered as a guide in formatting tutor responses to papers submitted by students to the WriteAway service.
2) Tutor Response Rubric: A general rubric for the WriteAway Coordinator, tutors, and institutional coordinators to monitor tutor responses.
Both the tutor response template and rubric are available to institutional coordinators on the training page, here.
Tutoring Platform
The tutoring platform is accessible at: https://writeaway.libapps.com/libapps/login.php
The platform is also accessible through the writeaway.ca > Tutors > Tutoring Platform
Accounts
- Institutional Coordinator & Tutor Accounts: The WriteAway Administrative Centre provides institutional coordinators and tutors with tutoring platform accounts. When tutors begin their training, they will have access to the training queues. When training is completed, tutors will be granted access to the live queues.
Reports
Statistics
WriteAway uses a modernized self-serve model for statistics retrieval that enables institutional coordinators to collect the statistics that are relevant to their institutions and service reports. Guides for retrieving statistics using the tutoring platform software are available here.
Student Survey
When students receive their feedback, a link is provided to a post-usage survey. Students are invited to provide feedback on WriteAway, rating their experience, and offering comments. The WriteAway Administrative Centre will facilitate reporting on the student survey.
Managing Backlogs
The WriteAway service goal is to respond to papers submitted within 48 hours. Backlogs occur when the number of papers submitted to WriteAway exceeds tutors’ capabilities to respond within 48 hours. The WriteAway Administrative Centre will work to keep students informed when response times remain above 48 hours.
When response times rise above 48 hours, the following protocol is used:
Bounced Student Emails
The tutoring platform records instances where emails cannot be delivered to students. The WriteAway Administrative Centre monitors these records and may follow up with institutional coordinators to determine how best to proceed. Depending on the issue, the WriteAway Administrative Centre may ask an institutional coordinator to contact their institutional IT support.
Errors also occur when a student makes an error in typing their email address. With an incorrect email address, messages will never deliver. The WriteAway Administrative Centre will notify the institutional coordinator at the student’s institution that a student has tried to submit, but has misspelled their email. The institutional coordinator can, if they wish, try to identify and contact the student OR they can be aware that the student may be in touch regarding a submission.
Students who have made an error in their email need to contact the WriteAway Administrative Centre with an alternate email address and should be prepared to answer a security question.
Evaluation Framework
An evaluation framework is being used to monitor the WriteAway service each term. The most current evaluation framework is available here.
