Welcome to the Virtual Writing Center
The VWC provides free peer feedback on writing for Antioch University students. We support your writing process from start to finish!
- Outlining and Planning: Submit your outlines and notes for feedback on ideas.
- Major Revision: Submit your initial drafts, and even incomplete drafts, for big picture feedback on thesis, structure, organization, integration of sources, and so on.
- Minor Revision: Submit your 2nd or 3rd drafts to work on paragraph structure, clarity, conciseness, syntax, and other sentence-level feedback.
- Style and Polish: Submit your near-final drafts for suggestions about APA or MLA, word choice, grammar, and other procedural edits.
To take advantage of peer feedback from the VWC, just click the login link for your campus or program under “Submit Your Writing” on the right (bottom on mobile). Also check out “About the VWC” below to learn more about the feedback process.
Have questions about the process or technical issues submitting? Contact us by e-mail or voicemail! Email us at [email protected], or leave us a voicemail at 937-769-1355.
Page art by Julie Fortney, VWC Peer Consultant
Announcements: Winter Break, Workshops, and COVID-19 Response
Winter Break: The VWC will be closed for Winter Break from Dec 16th through January 10th. We will stop accepting new submissions on December 16th starting at Noon Pacific Time/3pm Eastern Time. We will respond to all pending submissions no later than Friday December 18th, at which point the VWC will be on break until the week of January 10th, when we will resume accepting submissions and responding in 48 hours as usual.
Shared Writing Center and Library Workshops: to give you more options as we all work in more isolation than usual, all the campus Writing Centers, the Virtual Writing Center, and the Antioch Libraries will be opening their various virtual workshops to all students throughout the Summer and Fall 2020, and Winter and Spring 2021. These will include topics from APA Style to designing presentations to organizing your research to framing your writing, and more! We’ll email students with registration info and upcoming workshop lists more or less monthly.
If you haven’t received information and are interested in upcoming workshops, just send us an email and we can share everything currently scheduled along with registration information.
COVID-19: We are operating as normal despite the pandemic crisis; however, response times may sometimes be over 48 hours since we are all dealing with daily changes in our various local areas. We will get you feedback even if it takes a little longer. Thanks for your patience, and stay safe!
If you’d like some ideas of how to write productively during our collective social isolation, check out some resources here.
How to Submit Your Work
Use the “Submit Your Writing” menu on the top right (desktop) or bottom (tablet and mobile) to access the VWC system and send in your work for comments. For details about parts of the process, check out the links below:
- How to Submit and What to Expect
- How to Read Your Feedback
- Submission Policies
- Live Consultations
- Meet the VWC Team
- FAQ (Answers to your questions!)
New Resources: Virtual Sessions, Literature Reviews, and Video Presentations
This resource offers a few tips for an effective virtual session:
This new resource by Director of Writing Anne Maxham explains some of the key parts of writing the literature review:
These two additional new resources can help you plan a record a video presentation:
Nearly all Antioch University programs transitioned to APA 7th Edition as of January 2020. Below are three resources to help you understand the new Student Writing guidelines, and the specific changes in 7th Edition as compared to 6th Edition:
- APA Style 7th Edition Quick Reference for Common Types of Sources
- APA Style 7th Edition Checklist
- APA Style 7th Edition Changes for Student Writers
The Writer’s Toolkit: Transforming the Inner Voice to the Outer Voice
It’s my first English class of undergrad and I receive feedback for my first assignment. I see a sea of red ink littered with the dreaded “awk”.
“There’s nothing awkward about my writing!” I burst.
This professor must hate me. She’s letting us do second drafts, but I struggle to even look at her words. I decide to start small and try to understand what the professor means by the first “awk” sentence.
“Taking life a day at a time is how I think it should be done to be happy,” it reads.
What’s so awkward about that? I read the sentence again and again but I can’t figure it out.
My English major roommate is out, so I can’t ask her to read it. I click the “Accessibility Toolbar” in Microsoft Word and activate “Read Aloud”. If I read the first draft out loud, I can probably stomach the feedback and catch hiccups.
As the robot voice speaks my words to me, I pause on the “awk” sentence. Something sounds off. Though these are my words, they don’t sound like it or like anything other people say.
Experimentally, I type “Taking life one day at a time will make people happy” and have Word read that to me. This time the sentence sounds conversational. I could imagine sitting in a room with another person. The first time the voice spoke to me, the conversation was passive and vague, as though the voice could not commit to taking a stance. Now, the voice takes an active stance, clearly informing me about their idea rather than alluding to it.
I edit the rest of my paper in this way and have been for every assignment since. I haven’t spotted a single “awk” on writing feedback between then and now.
Rachel Frank
Virtual Writing Center Consultant
Antioch University
Read previous posts in the Writer’s Toolkit archives.