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Online Writing Lab

Effective writing skills are essential for academic and professional success and academic programs at the Academy depend upon solid writing skills. With this in mind, the Academy maintains an online writing lab known as the Academy’s Center for Collegiate Excellence and Student Success (ACCESS).

ACCESS can be found within the Course Management System. It presents 50 online tutorials designed to help students foster better writing in an effort to further their academic success and professional advancement.

Students are given the opportunity to engage one, or more, of the online tutorials which are built around six writing fields:

  1. The General Writing Process
  2. Academic Writing
  3. Editorial Style and Format
  4. Grammar and Language Mechanics
  5. Professional and Technical Writing
  6. Job Search Writing

Within each writing field, students will find tutorials on various topics. For example, to review and practice using commas there is a tutorial on “Using Commas” found within Section 4 “Grammar and Language Mechanics”.

Student participation in ACCESS is optional and generally prompted by suggestions from faculty when assignments have been reviewed and certain deficiencies have been noted.

Assessment of the ACCESS tutorials is based upon specific rubrics according to the following procedure. (Rubrics may be found in the Academic Catalogs.)

  • As students submit their writing assignments, they are graded by the course instructor according to the appropriate grading rubric.
  • If the professor deems it necessary, a specific tutorial (or tutorials) will be suggested. Suggestions are based upon the professor’s evaluation as well as the score received for the writing assignment.
  • If the student completes the recommended tutorial(s), the ACCESS Coordinator will grade the exercise(s) and notify both student and professor.

While participation does not affect a student’s grade, through data collected by the Academy’s Institutional Effectiveness Committee, students who complete ACCESS tutorials show improved grade point averages.