Writing Instruction

In the spring of 2017, I worked as a Teaching Assistant in the History Lab, UW-Madison’s innovative tutoring center.  In this role, I provided 45-minute one-on-one guidance to undergraduates to help them through the process of writing academic papers.  I also collaborated with my fellow tutors to create online instructional aids explaining how students could improve specific aspects of their writing. For example, I created this Quick Guide to help students come up with an effective structure for their papers.

One limitation of our approach was that students did not have a way to practice what they learned after leaving our office. To make this possible, and help incoming students better assess their writing level, I used HTML, JavaScript, and CSS to design this online quiz. When a student answers the question incorrectly, they are shown the right answer along with a detailed explanation of why it is correct. Through multiple iterations, I incorporated the advice of my colleagues to make sure the quiz fit into our tutoring center’s overall vision.

(Note: Squarespace has disabled Javascript, so the quiz doesn’t function normally, but this preview provides a sense of how it works)