Feeling stuck on a tech comm assignment? Check out the TECM Comm Lab on the second floor of the Auditorium building, room 207.

Opened this August, the lab is a one-on-one tutoring experience designed to help students develop their projects and assignments in technical communication courses. Dr. Kathryn Raign directs the lab and tutors work with students in either face-to-face or online teaching sessions.

Though the lab expects to cater primarily to students in TECM 1700 and 2700, Raign prepares her tutors to help with any TECM class assignment. They build their lesson plans on all the assignment materials a professor hands out, including textbook readings and assignment rubrics.

They also develop a reference sheet of best practices before sending them off for assistant chair Dr. Ryan Boettger to approve. When approved, Raign sends the document to the professor teaching the assignment for approval. The document is then ready for students. Raign says the process is similar to creating technical communication documents in the workforce.

We make sure [the lab and faculty] are teaching the same thing," Raign said.

Raign says the lab's goal is to give students tools to make them better editors of their own work rather than answers. For some, it means prompting them to think about their writing but for others it's simply building confidence in their writing.

"Students know more than they think they do. They just need someone to help them realize it," Raign said. "One-on-one, you can do that."

Two lab tutors, Megan Cohen and Rebecca Strange, agree. Both are tech comm students who have been with the lab since it opened and feel they can relate to the students with whom they work. Both recall struggling with assignments, either due to their lack of skills or self-confidence, and do everything they can to help students through similar troubles.