The following comments come from Writing Workshop participants who represent a range of schools and departments, including Architectural History, Art History, Anthropology, Chemistry, Classics, Drama, Environmental Sciences, History, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Physics, Religious Studies, Sociology, Spanish, Italian & Portuguese, STS (formerly TCC) and Urban & Environmental Planning:

Very effective. Refreshed my memory on some basic writing strategies. Gave me more confidence.

I found the openness and non-didactic nature of the workshop to be most helpful. We're graduate students and we were treated as such. The leader did a great job.

It was good to evaluate papers together and get validation that our comments/ideas were on target. I found it very helpful to get ideas on what to evaluate papers on (i.e., prioritizing comments), information on technical terms and ideas on ways to comment.

I didn't think that I would enjoy the workshop, but it was really useful.

The workshop was very effective. I was able to write better comments on my papers as a result. I was made aware of certain traps that graders might fall into while grading papers that appear on the surface to be very good.

Most helpful was hearing how to grade papers effectively and quickly while still writing comments useful to the students.

This was very helpful. There's always the fear that I'm grading like a lunatic, and to go through papers in this forum was helpful.

It was very helpful to be introduced to a system. Having a basis with which to work will make my job easier.

Good to compare our (the graders) expectations for student work…Rubrics are key!

This was a great workshop. [The workshop leader] did a fantastic job of explaining what writing instruction UVa students are given & helping us to conceptualize & make concrete our expectations for different types of assignments.

Extremely effective! Great atmosphere for open, sincere exchange of thoughts.

Make them [Writing Workshops] required for all TA graders!