Click on the "Schedule an Appointment" button at the top of this page (http://jmu.mywconline.com/) to access the University Writing Center's online scheduler.

• If this is your first UWC visit, you'll need to click on the "Register for an account" link on the scheduler landing page. Registering for a UWC account takes about two minutes, and the password you create will remain the same throughout your JMU career.

In the UWC's online scheduler, you can meet the consultants who are available during your preferred days and times by clicking on the Meet the UWC Team link at the top of the page.

After you click on any of the open white boxes on the schedule, the "Create New Appointment" page asks for information and offers choices:

• You can choose whether your appointment will be for 60 or 30 minutes and then whether your appointment will be face-to-face or online.
• You can help your UWC consultant prepare for your session by completing the session request form. We especially value the "What are your concerns about this writing task?" question.
• You can attach files at the bottom of the appointment form. If you have a prompt, or a draft, or a set of notes you'd like to attach, feel free to do.
• You can edit your appointment request form and can upload new/revised files before your session.

After you complete your session request form and click on the "Create Appointment" button at the bottom of the page, you'll get an email confirming that you've successfully signed up for a session. 

After your session, you'll receive a second email asking you to complete a very quick survey on your UWC experience. We appreciate your time and interest in offering feedback.

Sessions are set by default in the WCOnline scheduler to last for 30 minutes, which translates to 25 minutes of actual talking time. You can extend your session to 60 minutes in the box next to the date in the session request form.

We suggest that you think first about a 60-minute session, which translates to 50 minutes of talking time. We know your time is tight, but we also know you are working on your writing. We'd much rather that your session ends with time to spare than that you feel like you were racing the clock.

• 60-minute sessions are better for many writing tasks:
  • You are looking for help understanding or getting started on an assignment.
  • Your rough draft is more than 3 pages.
  • Your project has mulitple components or stages.
  • You are working to act on important, big-picture feedback.
  • You are signing up for a group session on behalf of your group or are representing your group.
  • You are working on a short piece that requires a lot of thought and planning (e.g., a personal statement, a cover letter, an application or scholarship essay, a policy brief, an elevator pitch, a caption... ).

•  30-minute sessions work best for quick writing tasks or specific concerns:
  • You are working on a relatively short project that you can introduce quickly.
  • You have localized concerns (e.g., you're working on a paragraph or a specific concern, or you have a formatting or citation question).
  • You want to start a conversation that you can continue in a later UWC session.
  • You want to check in after/build on an earlier UWC session.

We'd love to meet you in person in the University Writing Center, located in the JMU Learning Centers on the first floor of JMU's Student Success Center. Our Locations and Hours page offers more information.

Face-to-face sessions generally enable a broader range of writing help as they cut through technology challenges. Working in person allows you and your trained writing consultant to fully engage your concerns and your texts.

About 30% of UWC clients opt for online sessions. Online sessions are particularly useful if

• You work best in an online setting. 
• You are possibly contagious or at risk, and you want to minimize the chance of transmission or exposure.
• You take your JMU classes online, do not live in Harrisonburg, and/or need to schedule around class/work/family priorities.
• You want to set up a hybrid session for your group, with some group members working in person in the UWC and other group members participating online. The group sessions section of this page offers advice regarding hybrid sessions.

We offer sessions starting on the hour and half hour in our University Writing Center home base. If you are thinking about heading our way, your first, best bet is to check whether any consultants are available through the UWC's online scheduler (http://jmu.mywconline.com/). If this is your first visit to the UWC, you'll need to register for an account before you can access the scheduler (registering takes about two minutes).

If you are in the neighborhood, just come on in, no matter where the minute hand is on the clock dial. The friendly people at our Learning Centers' front desk can help you register for your UWC account, introduce you to the UWC space, and/or assess in the moment whether a UWC consultant might be available to work with you.

If you catch us when there's no one at the front desk, keep walking straight on into the UWC to find someone who can help you get started.

East Campus Walk-in Wednesdays: New in Fall 2024, we're offering walk-in Wednesdays from 10:00 - 1:00 in EnGeo 2208, featuring UWC consultants Griffin Brilhart, Emily Kay, and Sydney Nguyen. You don't need to look at our schedule, and you don't need to make an appointment. Just walk on in!

In every UWC session, your consultant will help you engage your immediate writing concerns and identify transferable strategies, approaches, or resources that you can apply after the session and in your future writing projects. Every UWC session will focus in on the following elements:

• Rapport building/affirming: If this is your first visit, we'll meet you as a person and as a writer. If you're returning to the UWC, we'll catch up with you since your last visit.
• Time for assessing/reading: We'll check out your assignment prompt with you, and we'll talk through or ask for a tour through your draft or your notes. We might also look at any feedback you've received from your professor, peer reviewers, group members, or other readers.
• Agenda setting: We'll talk with you about your writing concerns and work with you to establish a plan for the session and for how you can focus your efforts after the session.

In a general sense, our aim is to help you make your writing better, wherever you are in your writing process. UWC consultants can help you invent, brainstorm, focus in, plan, organize, edit, cut, expand, or clarify your writing. We can help you assess your audience, respond to feedback, and understand disciplinary or genre conventions. We can play the new reader role to offer suggestions, and we can supply a trained second set of eyes.

Every writing project is different, so there's no set script for your UWC session. We'll work with you on the day, in the moment, to help you move your writing forward. 

There are a few things we won't do:

• We will not do all the work for you while you wait, nor will we agree that you drop off your draft to pick up later on.
• We will not comment on grades, either before you submit your work to your professor or after you have your work back.
• We will not report directly to your professor, coach, advisor, or supervisor regarding your UWC visits, though we'll happily supply proof of your visit that you can share with them. For more information, check out the Proving Your UWC Visit FAQ later on this page.

 Schedule your session ahead of your due date:

• We'll work with you at any stage in your writing process, but we know that writers benefit most from UWC visits when they're planning, drafting, revising, or truly editing, instead of racing against a deadline.

Be as specific as you can in completing your session request form and early in your session:

• When you schedule your appointment through the UWC's online scheduler (http://jmu.mywconline.com/), you can help your consultant by completing the "Concerns" box. What do you hope or need to focus on during the meeting? Where are you in your writing process? What kind of writing help has worked best for you in the past?
• When you schedule your appointment, the UWC's online scheduler also invites you to attach files (e.g., your assignment prompt, your draft/outline, your source list....)
• You can edit your appointment after you've scheduled it. You might get back in there to add a new/updated draft, firm up what you typed into the "Concerns" box, switch whether your appointment will be face to face or online, or anything else that seems pertinent.
• In the first minutes of your session, you and your consultant will work together to set an agenda. Your consultant will have read your session request form, but you can be ready to supply more information. Have your needs have changed? Have you added to or revised your draft? Have you received professor, classmate, or group member feedback? 

Be ready to share your different texts, whether you have scheduled an in-person session or are working online:

• We love talking with you about your writing task, and it helps to see your your assignment, prompt, guidelines, instructions...
• We love talking through any ideas, angles, or questions that you have scribbled down or that you need help putting on the page or screen.
• We love talking through your drafts, no matter where you are in your writing process. Whether you have a sentence, the beginnings of an outline, a rough/unfinished start, or a nearly finalized draft, be ready to share. Bring a hard copy of your draft, your laptop with an open file, or a file you can readily share in online setting. 
• We also love talking with you about your sources. You don't need to have them all open as tabs on your laptop, nor do you need to come in with a perfectly formatted list of sources, but you can save time and create a flow for your session by being ready to access your sources.

Plan to be an active partner during your session:

• Be ready to ask and respond to questions: You can use questions to understand, focus in, and identify opportunities. Your consultant will also ask questions to clarify ideas, and open up
• Take notes: You can add comments to your draft, type write into your draft, or use one of the handy notepads on the UWC tables.
  • Flashes of insight and great lines need to be recorded before they are lost in the flow of conversation.
  • Big picture ideas that made sense in the moment are hard to recapture after the fact.

Work at the end of your session and immediately after your session to consolidate your insights:

• At the end of your session, your consultant will help you affirm your agenda/task list going forward.
• Your consultant might have volunteered to take notes during your session. They might also have helped you create an outline, diagrammed concepts, or offered links to useful resources. You can and should ask to take these notes with you.
• Try to find time as soon as possible after your session ends to consolidate and build on your ideas. Connections, directions, and self- affirmations that make sense during a session can dissipate amid all your other commitments later in the day.

Consider returning to the UWC for help on the same writing project:

• In each UWC session, our goal is to help you address your immediate concerns as we help you define transportable strategies for after the session/other writing projects. Many writing projects benefit from multiple UWC visits.
• You can schedule again with the same consultant, building a rich conversation through multiple visits and drafts.
• You can schedule with a new UWC consultant and can be confident that they will greet you as a returner. They will know about your work, your concerns, and your agenda.

NOTE: The UWC is a training center. From time to time, UWC consultants fill in for other consultants, observe each other, and work together during sessions. 

The UWC welcomes full groups, parts of groups, and individuals from groups. We love face-to-face group sessions, but we can also do onine group sessions, or hybrid group sessions, with most of your group members in person and at least one group member participating online. Note that 60-minute sessions generally work best for group projects.

In an ideal session, we'll focus on the writing produced by the group members able to participate in the session. If you wrote Section A of a group project but not Sections B and C, we'll try to focus on Section A. This said, we know that finding an open time for your whole group can be impossible and that you might be sending delegated representatives. We also know that in some group writing projects, one or two members agree/are assigned to serve as editors. In these cases, we can help the group's designated editors to effectively edit the paper as a whole.

Only one group member needs to make an appointment to set up a group session. As you're completing the session request form, be sure to click the button next to the "Is this a group-written paper?" question. As you complete the "Concerns" box at the bottom of the session request form, you might tell us how many people are in your group and who will be able to participate in the session.

If you want to set up a hybrid session, click on the "Yes. Schedule Online appointment" button in the session request form and then be very clear down in the "Concerns" box to let your consultant know that you're planning on a hybrid session, with some of your group members coming in person and at least one of your group members joining online.

After you schedule a hybrid or fully online group session, you can immediately share the link for the session with your group members. Click into your appointment in the UWC's online scheduler, click on "Start or Join Online Conversation," and then copy the URL at the top of WCOnline page that opens. Sharing the URL ahead of time with your group members might help them to test-drive any tech problems.

UWC group sessions work best when everyone can see and edit the same active file, and you might plan to offer your consultant a link to your group's shared file along with temporary editing privileges. If your group is not working in a shared online file format, we can project your draft on one of our UWC big screens or can share your screen online.

The University Writing Center empowers students, faculty, and staff to develop writing and critical thinking skills by providing personalized consultations, resources, and programs that strengthen writing across campus. 

UWC consultants help JMU student writers with all types of academic and non-academic writing: course assignments from all JMU disciplines, personal statements, cover letters, scholarship applications, articles for publication, theses and dissertations, digital work, creative writing, and other writing projects. We also work with JMU faculty and staff with their academic and non-academic writing projects, and we assist faculty in designing effective assignments and responding to student writing.

We offer

The UWC Writing Guides and Handouts page organizes a bunch of useful online resources in four columns:

• The writing process
• Types of writing
• Grammar, punctuation, and style
• Citation and formatting resources

Our UWC consultants have evaluated and endorsed all these resources, and we work every semester to assess the page as a whole for usefulness and correctness.

Sure, you could just Google it and go with whatever comes up first, but we suggest starting here.

Dead links do happen, and we are sometimes slow to recognize an opportunity. If you find a dead link or would like to see a new resource on the site, please let us know.

Will my professor know I visited the UWC?

• No, not unless you tell them. You can ask your consultant for a note stating that you participated in a UWC session (see below), but what you and your consultant say is confidential. It's important for you to feel safe to test out ideas during your UWC sessions, and it's important for us to stay outside of the evaluative classroom learning space.

How do I prove I visited the UWC?

• If you need to show that you met with a UWC consultant, just let your consultant know. If you've signed up for a face-to-face session in the UWC, your consultant can complete a "proof of visit" slip for you. If your session is online, your consultant can supply a testimonial in the chat for you to screenshot.

I'm feeling sick or may be contagious. What do I do?

• If you're feeling even just a bit under the weather, may still be contagious, or may have been exposed to something, please opt for an online session. If you've already scheduled a face-to-face session, you can edit your appointment in the UWC's online scheduler to shift to an online session.
• If you're down for the count, take care of yourself and try to cancel your session at least an hour before your start time.

I'm running late for my session. What can I do?

• If you're running a few minutes late but still hope to make your session, try calling our front desk at (540) 568-1759. The friendly person who answers the phone can help you hold your slot for an extra 10 minutes if the UWC is busy. They may also be able to help you push your starting time back a half hour or to reschedule for later in the day.
• If you can't contact us by phone, you can get into the UWC's online scheduler to reschedule or cancel your session.

I missed my appointment. What now?

• If we don't hear from you ahead of time and/or if you are more than 10 minutes late, we may have to cancel your session to open up the slot for other clients. If we don't hear from you or see you at all, we will register your appointment as "missed."
• We do track missed sessions. If you miss a first session, you can write to let us know why. If you miss a second session, the UWC's online scheduler will automatically revoke your online scheduling privileges through the end of the semester. If you find yourself in this temporary doghouse, you can still use the Writing Center on a walk-in basis.

How many UWC sessions can I schedule each day and week?

• You may schedule up to two sessions totaling a maximum of 120 minutes of session time per day, either for the same writng project or for different writing projects. If you do want to sign up for two sessions in a single day, we'll ask that you leave some time to revise and rest between your first and second session.
• You may return to the UWC for help on the same project as many times each week as you need provided you invest significant effort/make significant revisions between each visit.

How far ahead can I schedule UWC sessions?

• You may schedule your UWC sessions up to two weeks in advance through the UWC's online scheduler.

How do I contact the UWC?

• If you have immediate questions during our open hours, you can call the Learning Centers' front desk at (540) 568-1759 or can visit us in the University Writing Center on the first floor of the Student Success Center.
• For less immediate questions or requests, email Learning Centers Associate Director Rudy Barrett (barretrl@jmu.edu).