About the writing center

The ability to write well is an important skill in all degrees as well as in most academic professions. In order to promote the development of this key competence, the writing centre was founded at the University of Konstanz in 2012 with funds from the Quality Pact for Teaching. It serves as the central point of call for all matters of student writing for lecturers and students. Since 2021, the writing centre is permanently established in the Division of Student Affairs and Teaching.

The Writing Centre

The best way for students to learn academic writing is to link it closely to their subject specific content. This is why the writing centre aims to cooperate with the individual departments in establishing the promotion of writing skills as part of the discipline's curriculum and to offer didactic support for lecturers. In addition, the writing centre offers direct support for students, joint writing sessions and opportunities for exchange, as well as brief introductory sessions.

The writing centre takes a proactive and diversity oriented approach to ensure that all students are supported according to their individual, subject specific needs during all phases of their degree. In doing so, it contributes to the continuous improvement of the quality of teaching at the university and helps to promote successful degree studies. In addition, it creates special offers whenever targeted writing support in individual areas or for special interest groups is needed.

Learning to write

Good writing requires a range of very different skills:

• an understanding of the writing process and time management,
• discipline-specific knowledge, language skills, genre awareness,
• adptation to different contexts,
• research skills, media skills and more.

Writing skills continue to develop and are always linked to a certain area of application. This means building on the skills acquired in secondary school, all students need to learn academic writing for their degrees.

The writing centre supports all students. In our peer tutoring service, students can talk about their writing projects on an individual, one-on-one basis and receive feedback on their texts so that they can revise and improve them. In addition, we offer courses and workshops for students.

Teaching Writing

Writing is part of a number of central transferable skills which students need to acquire as part of competence oriented degree studies. Therefore, the promotion of writing competence is achieved both as within the discipline as well as in specific writing sessions and events.

In subject specific courses, student writing can be promoted through specific settings for teaching and learning as well as tailor-made writing tasks. This also encourages the active and more involved engagement with the subject content so that writing tasks can be used as tools for thinking and learning. The writing centre supports lecturers from all subjects through continuing education, teaching consultations as well as the provision of teaching materials. Lecturers can also book course units for their seminars in which one of our staff communicates writing knowledge directly to the students.

In addition, special courses on academic writing and academic work are useful, particularly in introductory settings for first semester students or in courses on specific parts of writing competence such as writing in a foreign language. The writing centre cooperates closely with the Communication, Information, Media Centre (KIM) in order to provide integrated information literacy and writing competence. Interdisciplinary courses on such topics are also offered through the program for Transferable Skills (SQ). Furthermore, the writing centre supports the departments in designing introductions to academic work for their degrees and in integrating them in their curricula.

Publications

• Everke Buchanan, Stefanie (2021): "Challenging our Lineages: Lessons on Language and Writing from a Writing Center Collaboration between Germany and Australia". In: The Writing Center Journal 38.3, 75-86.
• Everke Buchanan, Stefanie; Oberzaucher, Frank (2021): "Schreiben als Mittel des fachlichen Lernens in der Konstanzer Soziologie und Ethnologie: Evaluation der Maßnahmen durch Studierende, Lehrende und Fachbereichsverwaltung". In Swantje Lahm, Frank Meyhöfer und Friederike Neumann (Hg.): Schreiblehrkonzepte an Hochschulen: Fallstudien und Reflexionen zum fachspezifischen Schreibenlehren und -lernen (S. 221–234). wbv.
• Meyer, Heike (2019): Was, wie und wozu zitieren? - Zitierkonventionen erkunden. In: Christian Wymann: Praxishandbuch Schreibdidaktik. Übungen zur Vermittlung wissenschaftlicher Schreibkompetenzen. Opladen, Toronto: Barbara Budrich, 142–146.
• Everke Buchanan, Stefanie; Heeg, Judith (2019): "Gemeinsam statt einsam". Kooperation zwischen Schreibzentrum und Bibliothek zur Förderung wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens von Studierenden. In: Wilfried Sühl-Strohmenger und Ladina Tschander: Praxishandbuch Schreiben in der Hochschulbibliothek, S. 274–295.
• Meyer, Heike (2019): Ins wissenschaftliche Schreiben auf Englisch hineinwachsen. Strategien von vier internationalen PhD-Studierenden in Australien. JoSch - Journal der Schreibberatung 17, 11-19.
• Everke Buchanan, Stefanie (2018): Fünf Jahre Schreibzentrum an der Universität Konstanz. KIM kompakt 102, 53-57.
• Everke Buchanan, Stefanie & Oberzaucher, Frank (2017): Schreibberatung als Gegenstand ethnografischer Feldforschung und teilnehmender Beobachtung. In: Brinkschulte, Melanie und Kreitz, David: Qualitative Methoden in der Schreibforschung. Bielefeld: wbv, 103-120.
• Meyer, Heike & Everke Buchanan, Stefanie (2016): Förderung studentischen Schreibens an der Universität Konstanz. In: Knorr, Dagmar: Akademisches Schreiben (Halbband 1): Vom Qualitätspakt Lehre geförderte Schreibzentren und Schreibwerkstätten. Hamburg: Universität Hamburg [Universitätskolleg-Schriften; 13], 131-135.
• Everke Buchanan, Stefanie & Meyer, Heike (2016): Wissenschaftliches Schreiben lernen - integriert im Fach. Zeitschrift für Hochschulentwicklung 11 (2), 45-61.
• Kruse, Otto; Meyer, Heike; Everke Buchanan, Stefanie (2015): Schreiben an der Universität Konstanz. Eine Befragung von Studierenden und Lehrenden. Winterthur: ZHAW (Working Papers in Applied Linguistics, 12).
• Oberzaucher, Frank; Everke Buchanan, Stefanie & Kerst, Benjamin (2015): Schreibprozessorientierte Seminarformen wagen. Das Hochschulwesen 63 (5+6), 158-162.