What’s working and how do we know? While these questions are useful for writing center administrators, they can pose potential challenges for administrators if the kind of data available does not meet some stakeholder’s expectations. 

For this month’s rewind and reset, we are reflecting on this issue through Bruce Bowles Jr’s article When a Measure Becomes a Target: The Dangers of Using Grades in Writing Center Assessment from volume 49, issue 2 of WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship. Bowles details the fraught relationship between writing center scholarship and quantitative assessment data, the consequences of using quantitative data, and the problem with using grades to prove writing centers’ impact. 

And stay tuned for a regional editor’s commentary on Bowles’ article, coming soon! 

Until then, you can read Bowles’ full piece which is now open access when you click here.