OWC General Guidelines
- Online Graduate Writing Assessment Test
- GRST 500 and GRST 501
- Intensives
- Live Tutoring Appointments
- Accessing Tutor Comments
Online Graduate Writing Assessment Test
The Online Graduate Writing Assessment test is multiple-choice and true/false and does not require a written essay. To take the test, students NOT on academic probation must enroll in GRST 501, as the test is a Week One assignment. Non-probation students who take the test before Week One may drop GRST 501 free of charge before the course begins. Students who withdraw after the course begins must follow the normal drop policies of Liberty Online.
Online students on academic probation must complete GRST 500 regardless of their assessment test score, and conditionally accepted students are automatically enrolled in GRST 500. Other students may register for GRST 501 through ASIST.
- If you score a 39 or below out of 50 questions, we strongly recommend that you use the OWC tutoring services for any future writing projects.
- If you score between a 40 and a 43, use of the OWC is encouraged but may not be necessary.
- If you score a 44 or above, you are most likely adequately prepared for any graduate writing projects included in your degree program, though you are still free to use the OWC.
GRST 500 and GRST 501
GRST 500/501, designed to be taken in conjunction with at least one other course, is an 8-week writing course, created to equip you with the organization and revision skills necessary to produce good graduate-level writing. It does not require a textbook and has a pass/fail format to give students a low-stress and low-pressure educational experience.
GRST 500: Introduction to Graduate Writing is a required course for all online graduate students who have been conditionally accepted on academic probation.
GRST 501: Graduate Writing is an optional course for online graduate students who are NOT conditionally accepted but are still apprehensive about future graduate-level writing assignments.
Both courses cost $100 for the entire course. No textbook purchase is necessary and financial aid may be applied for the course fee.
Intensives - General Guidelines
Online students who want to submit a tutoring request for a writing assignment in an on-campus intensive course, must substitute the letter "i" for the first number of your course section.
Intensive students are always welcome to use the on-campus writing centers for face-to-face tutoring appointments over the duration of the intensive.
Live Appointment Requests - General Guidelines
Qualified students may fill in a request form, upload a draft, and provide an available time (or times) to "meet" with a trained tutor to discuss the draft over Yahoo, AOL, or Skype services (make sure privacy settings allow those not on your contact list to contact you and make sure your speaker and microphone work). Therefore, this type of assistance requires a headset or a microphone and speakers in addition to one of the free instant messenger services mentioned above.
The OTS will communicate with you via email at various junctures of a request, so please make sure the junk mail setting in your Liberty webmail will not block emails from sharepoint@liberty.edu. Please keep emails as they provide information about your appointment and instructions for rescheduling. Live assistance requests may be accessed at any time before your appointment, and you may modify or cancel your request as long as your request status is "Not Started."
Live assistance appointments have the following important date and time restrictions:
- Live assistance requests must be made at least two days in advance.
- Live assistance requests must fall within seven days of the request date.
- Live assistance requests must fall between 8 a.m. and 11 p.m. Eastern Time. If you are in a different time zone, you are responsible for calculating your own local time for the meeting.
If you fail to show up for your live appointment, your assigned tutor will periodically call your computer for the first ten minutes of your scheduled appointment. After ten minutes, the tutor is no longer responsible to wait for a response and will contact his or her supervisor to cancel your appointment request.
A live appointment lasts up to one hour. Tutors will focus on the content of your paper and the selected formatting style. Tutors will not provide editing services. During a live appointment, you are responsible for taking notes, making changes to your draft, or writing tutor comments on your draft. You will not receive a draft back with tutor comments following a live appointment.
Accessing Tutor Comments in Offline Requests
In order to access your reviewed paper, you will need to click the link to your completed request in the notification email and locate the document next to "Tutor Revised Copy." Run your cursor over the document until the tiny gray paper clip appears at the top left corner of the document box. Click on the small gray paper clip to select "download" and access your paper. You may need to ADJUST YOUR POP UP BLOCKER or HOLD DOWN THE CTRL BUTTON to download your reviewed paper.
To read the tutor's comments on your paper, click on each individual comment. This will automatically highlight the word, punctuation, or phrase to which the comment is attached so you can easily understand the tutor's advice. If tutor comments do not appear to be visible, TRY SWITCHING BROWSERS between Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, or double-check the following:
- If using Word 2007 or 2010, make sure Final Showing Markup is selected in the dropdown menu under the Review tab and that all items are check marked under the Show Markup dropdown menu.
- If using Word 2003, open the Reviewing toolbar (View > Toolbars >Reviewing) and select the Show button. Make sure Comments, Insertions and Deletions, and Formatting are selected. If the comments still are not visible, open the Reviewing toolbar and make sure Final Showing Markup is selected from the Showing pop-up menu (left most item in toolbar).
