Setting realistic but concrete goals for our work allows each one of us to shape, manifest, measure, and reflect on our professional development and to do so in ways that are commensurate with our experience as peer writing tutors. Each quarter, your goal will have 3 required elements: a SMART goal statement, 1 or more artifacts, and a reflection on your goal.
🧾 Requirements & Prompt
Setting goals and documenting and reflecting on them makes the Writing Center as a whole better and more effective, given that, in study after study of goal setting within organizations, “the mean performance level of groups that set goals is almost one standard deviation higher than that of groups that do not set goals” (O’Leary-Kelly, Martocchio, & Frink, 1994, p. 1295).
A goal may relate to any aspect of your work at the writing center, including but not limited to tutoring strategies, writing knowledge, or any role you fulfill. You may collaborate with another tutor on your goal if you wish.
A goal has 3 required elements:
- a SMART goal statement
- 1 or more artifacts
- a reflection
🗯️ Statement
Make sure each goal is SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. It is understandable that you may want to set a goal like “I want to learn more about APA Style,” but that would not be a SMART goal. Though it is surely relevant to your work, it is hard to measure (what is “more” exactly?) and is not time-bound.
A SMART version of this goal might be to propose a specific, measurable and time-bound task that will result in you achieving the spirit of your initial well-intentioned but amorphous goal: “By the middle of Spring Quarter, I will write a blog post for UCWbLing about guidelines for paraphrasing versus using direct quotes in APA Style.”
Keep in mind that the time-bound aspect of your goal is influenced by the Professional Development Quarterly Timeline. Typically, this means you should plan to complete your goal by or before Week 8 of the quarter so that your completed goal and corresponding reflection can be fully included in your ePortfolio.
Sample 1st Quarter Goals
To help identify manageable goals, particularly for new tutors during your first quarter of employment at the Writing Center, consider the following:
- By the end of Week 6, I will share a tutoring tip with the staff by submitting content to the newsletter.
- By the end of each shift, I will complete every appointment letter and upload it to WCOnline.
- I will earn a shiny star sticker for my name tag from Katie Martin by presenting to my class about the Writing Center by Week 8 of Autumn Quarter.
- By the end of the quarter, I will schedule a writing center appointment to work on my own writing.
- By the end of Week 9, I will learn about Chicago style by using it in research paper for my history course.
- I will learn 3 strategies for revising sentence structure to apply to my tutoring by the end of Week 8.
🏆 Artifact(s)
For each goal, you will include 1 (or more) artifacts as evidence of that goal’s completion and/or your progress toward completion. Artifacts can represent any experience, project, or process that relates to your goal.
As a caption in the Artifact section, include a brief description of the artifact.
🪞 Reflection
(~250 words per goal)
Consider which of the following questions are most applicable to you and use them as a starting point for your reflection.
- Why did you create this goal?
- What assumptions did you have heading in? How were those assumptions affirmed or challenged?
- What did you learn about the topic of your goal?
- What did you learn about yourself through this process?
- What went well and why?
- What challenges did you face and why?
- Did you complete your goal? Why or why not?
- What transferable lesson(s) about the process do you plan to apply going forward?
Sample Artifacts & Reflection
“In this blog post I wrote for UCWbLing, I gave advice to tutors on what to look for when working with a writer on APA. Until I wrote this blog post, I did not realize that there are actually reasons behind many of the practices—they aren’t just arbitrary rules. For example, APA says to use past tense to talk about prior research because they want to mark it in a particular point in time, which is also why they include years in their in-text citations. It was also the first time that I ever grabbed the APA Publication Manual off the shelves near the reception desk, and I was amazed at how much information was in it. While researching this post, I came across the APA Style Blog, which has so many clear and detailed answers to questions about how to use APA style.
“I was actually happy Winter Quarter to see that I was going to have to write my first APA paper in a psychology class I was taking. This worked out perfectly with my goal to develop APA expertise because I again had to work closely with the Publication Manual and other APA resources as I wrote my paper. While I still don’t have all the rules memorized, I feel so much better about being able to point writers to different APA resources to help answer their questions. For example, I think outside of using the Publication Manual itself, and have found many other online resources to share with writers.”
❓ FAQ
What happens if I don’t achieve my goal?
If you commit to the goal-setting process and work to complete a given goal but do not complete it, you can either a.) work with your assigned administrator to substitute a different goal based on your work at the Writing Center or b.) document and reflect on the ultimately unsuccessful process. If you choose the latter, describe why your goal was incomplete and reflect on what lessons you might apply to future goal setting. In such cases, your artifact may be incomplete or document efforts you made towards the goal or you may not have an artifact. Good faith attempts to meet each SMART goal will count as meeting the requirement and—handled earnestly and honestly—may represent learning you can apply going forward in your work at the Writing Center and beyond.