A Writing Center's Prelude to Engagement: Assessing the Writing Needs, Goals, and Aspirations of Community-Based Organizations in Greater Lafayette

Abstract: This roundtable discussion will serve a forum to discuss the preliminary findings of a mixed-methods writing needs assessment for community-based organizations in Greater Lafayette, Indiana. The purpose of this roundtable is to (1) discuss both the methods and preliminary results of a needs assessment survey distributed to Lafayette-area organizations in 2023, and (2) gain insight from community-engaged scholars on opportunities to develop the project further as we move into the interviewing phase.

The purpose of the needs assessment survey is twofold. First, the Purdue Writing Lab hopes to better understand the variety of ways in which writing plays a role in the daily work of local community-based organizations in Greater Lafayette. We hope to identify the specific types of documents that organizations use on a regular basis so that Purdue can develop resources that better prepare students, faculty, and staff for work with these types of organizations. Second, we hope to gauge the capacity level local community-based organizations have to complete writing-related work. This will help the Writing Lab establish dialogues with potential community partners and develop new ways to extend our resources beyond campus to organizations who might want or need them.

This study contributes to a body of growing research on the role university writing labs can play in critical service-learning and community-engaged scholarship. The results of this study will be used to develop a Community-engaged Writing content suite on the Purdue OWL, one of the world's foremost online resources for academic writing. This study will also serve as the beginning of a continuous dialogue with community partners in the Greater Lafayette area who may benefit from further collaboration with Purdue University through a co-designed service-learning course designed to support partners' needs and interests. Roundtable participants will be invited to share their thoughts on the design, methods, and findings of our study, as well as insights they have gained through their own community work.

The format of this roundtable will include a 20-30 minute introduction to the study, including a brief presentation of preliminary data. Key findings will then be interrogated through a structured 30-40 minute discussion, which will be supplemented by a collaborative google document so participants can engage in the discussion through both auditory and written formats.

Keywords: writing centers, university-community partnerships, critical service-learning, needs assessment

Narrative: This roundtable discussion will serve as a forum to interrogate the preliminary findings of a mixed-methods writing needs assessment for community-based organizations in Greater Lafayette, Indiana. The purpose of this roundtable is to (1) discuss both the methods and preliminary results of a needs assessment survey distributed to Lafayette-area organizations in 2023, and (2) gain insights from community-engaged scholars on opportunities to develop the project further as we move into the interviewing phase.

The purpose of the needs assessment survey is twofold. First, the Purdue Writing Lab hopes to better understand the variety of ways in which writing plays a role in the daily work of local community-based organizations in Greater Lafayette. We hope to identify the specific types of documents that organizations use on a regular basis so that Purdue can develop resources that better prepare students, faculty, and staff for work with these types of organizations. Second, we hope to gauge the capacity level local community-based organizations have to complete writing-related work. This will help the Writing Lab establish dialogues with potential community partners and develop new ways to extend our resources beyond campus to organizations who might want or need them.

This study contributes to a body of growing research on the roles university writing labs can play in critical service-learning and community-engaged scholarship. Specifically over the past 20 years, university writing centers have sought to engage with communities beyond their campuses to identify the many forms of "literacies" that may be excluded or undervalued in university coursework. By engaging with individual and institutional community-based partners beyond campus, writing centers have co-developed projects including community publishing initiatives (Parks, 2009), creative writing community events (Rousculp, 2014), and even community writing centers (Rousculp, 2014). Through these projects, writing center scholars have employed engagement methods that prioritize a combination of "tactical" and "strategic" relationship-building (Restaino & Cella, 2013) as well as flexible, collaborative, and equity-focused project design and development (Parks, 2009).

Writing centers have approached community engagement primarily through a model of critical service-learning, which emphasizes the transformative power that social justice-oriented service-learning courses can facilitate for students, faculty, and community partners (Zimmerelli, 2015). By using service-learning coursework to uncover the inequitable systems of social and economic production in our communities, faculty can "foster a critical consciousness, allowing students to combine action and reflection in classroom and community to examine both the historical precedents of the social problems addressed in their service placements and the impact of their personal action/inaction in maintaining and transforming those problems" (Mitchell, 2008). As institutions that engage with students and faculty both in and beyond the classroom, writing centers play a strategic role in developing collaborative university-community partnerships that extend outside of single course-based projects.

The Purdue University Writing Lab is in a unique position to engage in community-university partnerships given its long history of producing writing resources for communities across the United States and abroad. With millions of unique users annually, the Purdue OWL's resources are designed for writers from all backgrounds at any stage of the writing process. With this in mind, the Purdue Writing Lab is pursuing a needs assessment of community-based organizations in Greater Lafayette to develop the framework for a community-engaged writing content suite that can provide helpful writing resources to community partners, students, and community-engaged faculty. This study will also serve as the beginning of a continuous dialogue with community partners in the Greater Lafayette area who may benefit from further collaboration with Purdue University through co-designed service-learning courses that aim to support partners' needs and interests.

This study employs a mixed-methods approach to needs assessment that extends beyond the traditional deficit approach. Surveys will be distributed digitally to a diverse variety of community-based organizations, including nonprofit service-providers, neighborhood associations and arts and cultural organizations. Organizations will be identified using a variety of sources, including community resource guides, the United Way of Greater Lafayette, and community-engaged faculty and staff at Purdue. The survey will allow respondents to opt-in to a follow-up interview, which will allow for a more in-depth exploration of each organization's needs, wants, and aspirations for writing-related projects. All responses to the survey will be anonymous.

For the roundtable, participants will be invited to share their thoughts on the design, methods, and findings of our study, as well as insights they have gained through their own community-engaged work. The format of this roundtable will include a 10 minute introduction to the study, including a brief presentation of preliminary data. Key findings will then be interrogated through a structured 40-50 minute discussion, which will be supplemented by a collaborative google document so participants can engage in the discussion through both auditory and written formats.

References:

Mitchell, Tania D. “Traditional vs. Critical Service-Learning: Engaging the Literature to Differentiate Two Models.” Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, vol. 14, no. 2, 2008, pp. 50-65. https://eric.ed.gov/redir=http%3a%2f%2fquod.lib.umich.edu%2fm%2fmjcsl%2fimages%2f3239521.0014.205.pdf.

Parks, Stephen J. “TEXTS OF OUR INSTITUTIONAL LIVES: Strategic Speculations on the Question of Value: The Role of Community Publishing in English Studies.” College English 71.5 (2009): 506–. Print.

Restaino, Jessica and Laurie JC Cella, editors. Unsustainable: Re-imagining Community Literacy, Public Writing, Service-Learning, and the University. Lexington Books, 2013.

Rousculp, Tiffany. Rhetoric of Respect: Recognizing Change at a Community Writing Center. National Council of Teachers of English, 2014.

Zimmerelli, Lisa. “A Place to Begin: Service-Learning Tutor Education and Writing Center Social Justice.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 35, no. 1, 2015, pp. 57-84. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43673619.