Initiating Change as a Writing Consultant

1983 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 296
Author(s):  
Catherine E. Lamb
Keyword(s):  
Writing Consultant

scholarly journals The Archives of Babel A Wikipedia - Workshop

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Basbøll
Keyword(s):  
Business School ◽  
School Library ◽  
Philip Roth ◽  
Open Letter ◽  
New Yorker ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Copenhagen Business School ◽  
Writing Consultant ◽  
The University ◽  
The New Yorker

In September of 2012, the American novelist Philip Roth published an open letter to Wikipedia in The New Yorker. “I am Philip Roth,” it began, and proceeded to explain how the editors of Wikipedia had gotten  the inspiration for his novel The Human Stain wrong. Though the article had in fact only mentioned a theory about his sources, Roth was adamant that it did not belong anywhere in a discussion of his novel. He wanted the idea removed entirely. This, it turns out, was a profound misunderstanding of the editorial practices of Wikipedia, and the theory that Roth would prefer we forget remains in the article to this  day. His letter in The New Yorker, of course, is duly cited. How well should librarians understand the editorial process behind Wikipedia’s articles? In this workshop, we will take a practical approach to the problem and have a look at what goes on behind the scenes, even edit some pages if we feel so inclined. The workshop will be led by Thomas Basbøll, a philosopher and writing consultant who has spent a few years working as a volunteer editor at Wikipedia and even has even been banned from editing certain pages for a time. The overall goal of the  workshop is to demystify one of the most accessed sources of knowledge in the world and help librarians  decide how to best help people like Philip Roth, and his readers, make sense of its “authority”.  Thomas Basbøll is the resident writing consultant at the Copenhagen Business School Library. He holds an MA in philosophy from the University of Copenhagen, and a PhD from the Copenhagen Business School. He works closely with students, teachers and researchers in their attempts to master “the craft of research” and is an avid blogger (blog.cbs.dk/inframethodology/). 

scholarly journals The Multilingual Turn in a Tutor Education Course: Using Threshold Concepts and Reflective Portfolios

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 237-257
Author(s):  
Hidy Basta
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Writing Center ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Threshold Concepts ◽  
Inclusive Practices ◽  
Multilingual Writers ◽  
Flexible System ◽  
Writing Consultant ◽  
The University

In this article, I reflect on efforts to revise the instruction and evaluation of an undergraduate writing consultant education course. The revisions are motivated by the desire to adopt practices that reflect the writing center’s commitment to social justice for multilingual/translingual students and by a commitment to provide an effective, flexible, and brave environment for writing consultants to continue their professional development. I argue that grounding understanding of multilingual writers in concepts that explicitly explore linguistic diversity and standardized 1 English ideologies as threshold concepts is essential to reconceptualize writing center practices. I also argue for the necessity of adopting a flexible system for reflection, engagement, and evaluation to support writing consultants’ learning and practice. I share prompts used in the course and some of the responses they generated. The responses suggest that although combining threshold concepts with a portfolio system is successful in supporting inclusive practices, there remains a need to expand more inclusive practices across the university.

Frank Aydelotte: AT&T's First Writing Consultant, 1917–1918

1995 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael G. Moran
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Writing Instruction ◽  
Technical Communication ◽  
World War ◽  
Humanistic Approach ◽  
Academic Settings ◽  
Writing Consultant ◽  
Insight Into

In 1917 Frank Aydelotte, an English professor at MIT, became AT&T's first outside writing consultant. Because many of its older, better-educated male employees had been mobilized to fight World War I, the company found itself with numerous young, poorly-educated employees. Drawing on the humanistic approach to writing instruction that he had developed at MIT in his book English and Engineering, Aydelotte created a year-long program at AT&T that taught employees to think and write about issues important to their work. The course is important for two reasons: first, it offers insight into the kinds of early consulting work that English professors did, and, second, it shows that Aydelotte's humanistic approach to technical communication worked as well in business as it did in academic settings.

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