Content area
Abstract
This dissertation explores the development and implementation of a small group writing lab: a peer response, recitation-style lab, connected to, but separate from, selected courses in the College of Business Administration (CBA) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In chapter one, I place CBA's writing center in a theoretical and historical tradition by comparing it to multi-service writing centers, writing-in-the-discipline movements and writing-across-the-curriculum programs at similar universities nation-wide.
In chapter two, I explain how the lab was formed. I discuss the state of writing in CBA as I encountered it in the fall of 1992. My purpose is to illuminate the issues and themes that emerged as I sought to unite theories of how students learn to write in composition courses to the realities of writing in a business course.
In chapter three, I explore the small group writing lab's pedagogical assumptions in practice. Drawing on the research of composition theorists such as Peter Elbow, Donald Murray, Kenneth Bruffee, Andrea Lunsford, Robert Brooke, etc., I examine student conversations in the lab. I look at how the small group writing lab gives students opportunities to explore and strengthen their individual writing processes as it also gives them necessary discourse training within a specific discipline.
The final chapter outlines the future direction of the lab--future directions for research and program evaluation and the development of a speech lab. I also identify the administrative issues, the politics of departmental governance, that have yet to be resolved before the small group writing lab can realize its mission.
