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Students at Dartmouth now can tap an entire battery of
resources to support their academic work, thanks to a joint venture by
Computing Services, the Composition Center, and the Dartmouth Library.
The Student Center for Research, Writing, and Information Technology (RWIT)
opened in Berry Library last fall. Staffed entirely by undergraduate students,
this integrated training facility helps students determine their research
topics, locate resources, structure and compose theses, use such multimedia
technology as video editing applications and PowerPoint presentations, and
trains them in a variety of other project/composition-polishing techniques.
The idea for RWIT was born a year ago, says Malcolm Brown, Director of
Academic Computing. Brown had attended a leadership institute where he had
focused on learning more about student support. Meanwhile, Karen Gocsik,
Director of Composition, had been talking with several of the College’s
librarians about research support for students. The parties shared their ideas
and decided to pool their resources, including the time and expertise of
Computing Services, Library, and Composition Center professionals to train the
student staffers.
Brown notes the center’s debut was timely. ‘Two or three years ago,
requiring students to do a video project was fairly exotic,’ he says. ‘But
today, because more faculty are experimenting in this direction, they want
students to have some direction in using these technologies. They had been
asking Computing Services to give demonstrations to students, but we thought
something more systematic was needed. By joining forces, we knew we could
provide that.’
Because RWIT operates limited hours (Sunday through Thursday, 7:00
p.m.—10:00 p.m.), students are encouraged to set up appointments to work with
staffers, although they can just drop by. For those who prefer to let their
fingers do the walking, the center’s Web site at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~rwit/
makes available a host of research tips and provides the means to set up
appointments with key members of Dartmouth’s professional staff. Brown
estimates that during fall term, RWIT conducted some 150 client sessions.
The center continues to be a work in progress, according to Brown. ‘The one
area of support that is under consideration is support for databases to help
students do research. This is a broad and deep area,’ he says. ‘Flat-file
database programs, such as FileMaker and Access, are
complicated enough; relational databases are quite complex. We need to
understand just what the student needs are in this area and then see how much
of it RWIT could support.’
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