In every team and department at Northwest Vista College, there are always great stories to tell that show faculty and staff going above and beyond.While it’s hard to capture every story, we hope to periodically share in this space some of the major accomplishments or projects that are taking place. Members of the executive team will write about important topics that they feel NVC employees should be made aware of.
Let us know about the positive things your area is doing to help students or improve processes by contacting myself or NVC Marketing & Strategic Communications.
– Dr. Ric Baser, NVC President
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Patrick R. Fontenot
Dean, Academic Success
Academic Support Services
This fall semester, the Northwest Vista College Library and the Writing Across the Curriculum Lab collaborated to provide a virtual one-stop-shop on Fridays where students could get help with research and writing. Like many services across the campus, the pandemic forced faculty, staff and students to learn in a new virtual environment.
Librarians and WAC Lab staff used the WAC Lab Zoom space to provide drop-in assistance for students on a range of topics from finding and evaluating sources to integrating sources and developing their ideas. Utilizing Zoom breakout rooms to work one-to-one with students, the librarians and tutors worked together to provide a wide range of research and writing services to support students through each stage of their assignments.
Overall, the partnership proved to be beneficial for students, and it will continue next semester, with some modifications based on what was learned during the pilot.While the amount of students helped wasn’t huge, the anectdotal evidence shows there exists a strong need:
One student came to the workshop in the morning, and then came back in the afternoon because she had gotten so much out of her morning session and had worked further on her research project.
An EDUC student had only been able to find general information on a topic she had been researching, but a librarian was able to help her find the specific information she needed, and a WAC Lab tutor was able to help her express her focused research topic in a clear thesis statement.
Another student expressed to a WAC Lab tutor how amazed she was that the librarians were able to help her find so many sources for her topic. The tutor helped her figure out how to cite the sources and integrate them into her essay.