PEER WRITING TUTORS HELP INTERNATIONAL, INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDENTS TO STAKE THEIR CLAIM

Writing well is central to academic success, but writing skills are not always taughtexplicitly. This is especially problematic in international, interdisciplinaryprograms where such skills help students from diverse backgrounds to develop ashared vocabulary of writing and tools to decode their new academic context.We tackled this issue by hiring and training peer writing tutors to encourage newstudents to learn writing skills (motivational scaffolding) and to help themunderstand how to improve their writing (cognitive scaffolding). Our studentlearning outcomes focused on making and supporting a main claim properlysupported by evidence. We assessed student learning through analysis of theiressay text and reflection papers, as well as surveys sent to both students and tutors.We found that peer writing tutors helped to motivate students to understand whyand how to make claims in academic writing. Focusing on citing sources asevidence for claims revealed that nearly a third of the class had not fullyunderstood appropriate citation despite previous training, leading to plagiarismwarnings, which required ongoing exercises and discussion to address. Tutors benefitted from participating in terms of improving their writing and honingteaching skills.We conclude that peer tutoring is an effective strategy to help both students andtutors across disciplines, nationalities, and writing experience levels to becomebetter and more reflective writers through reinforced motivation and scaffoldedskill-building, and that collaboration across traditional departments and roles inthe university linking teaching staff, support staff, and students was an effectiveand enjoyable way to promote interdisciplinary learning