WPA Desk

Teaching with WPA Desk

What to know before you assign it in a seminar or practicum.

Updated Play it →

Process: Directed draftingFirst draft

For
Graduate WPA seminars and practicums, and new assistant WPAs.
Time
15–25 minutes a term to read and decide, about an hour with a memo. 6–9 hours for the whole game with the writing.
Privacy
What students write stays in their own browser until they hand in a file.
Review
Open a whole class’s files at once, read-only, with a spreadsheet overview.
Cost
Free. The code is AGPL, and the scenarios are CC BY-NC-SA, so you can adapt them with credit.
Using it in a course?
Tell me. There are no analytics, so an email is how I’ll know.

What students do

Students play a PhD student in rhetoric and composition who has just become assistant director of first-year writing at Midland State, a fictional regional university. For three academic years, documents land on their desk each term: a dean who wants higher class caps, a full professor who won’t use the common syllabus, a parent’s grade complaint that has reached the president’s office. They choose what to do, often write the memo that makes the case, and see what happens, including consequences that arrive a term or a year later. In the third year they’re interim director and on the job market at once.

Every decision ends in a debrief: what experienced WPAs weigh in a case like it, how each person involved saw it, and readings. The game never declares one right answer. More on how it plays.

How long it takes

Read and decideWith the writing
One term15–25 minutesAbout an hour
Year 125–40 minutes1.5–2.5 hours
All six terms1.5–2 hours6–9 hours

“With the writing” means a memo each term, a short reflection after each decision, and the annual reports. I measured the rest by counting the words on every screen of a full playthrough, about 13,000, read at 200 to 250 words a minute, plus time to decide and use the tools. Memos are the estimate: I’ve allowed 20 to 30 minutes each, but nothing sets their length, so they take as long as you ask them to. Review mode records how long each student’s memos took from opening to sending, so you’ll see the real numbers for your class.

The game saves as students go, so a playthrough can stretch across a semester.

What arrives when

Scenarios arrive on a fixed calendar, one to three a term, so assign the game by term. Urgent items have to be settled before a term can end; the others can wait. Any term with sections still uncovered also needs a staffing decision. Settings that let you choose a class’s scenarios are planned but not built yet.

  1. Fall, Year 1

    • The Cap Memo
    • The Syllabus Holdout

  2. Spring, Year 1

    • The Grade Appeal Escalation urgent
    • The Late Hire urgentIf sections are left without instructors. Earlier choices can push it to a later spring.
    • Year 1 annual report: students write the program data section

  3. Fall, Year 2

    • The Accreditation Ask urgent
    • The Dual-Enrollment Drop

  4. Spring, Year 2

    • The DSP Pilot
    • The Detector
    • The Cap Review urgentOnly after a compromise or a one-year reprieve on caps.
    • Year 2 annual report: students write the assessment section

  5. Fall, Year 3

    Dr. Cherry goes on sabbatical, and the player becomes interim director. Job applications take 15 of the term’s hours.

    • The GTA Stipend Campaign
    • The Writing Center Budget Swap urgent

  6. Spring, Year 3

    • The Handoff
    • Year 3 annual report: students write all of it, and submitting it ends the game

Ways to assign it

  • One class meeting. Students play the first term, the fall of Year 1, before class: The Cap Memo and The Syllabus Holdout. That’s about an hour with one memo. Open their files in review mode beforehand and start with the “By scenario” view, which shows how the class split.
  • A two- or three-week unit. Year 1: the fall, then spring’s grade complaint and staffing, ending with the program data section of the annual report.
  • A whole semester. A game term every two weeks or so, with the Year 3 annual report as the final project. It’s the full report: program data, assessment, initiatives, requests for next year, and a look back over three years.

Students can replay, too. New game on the start screen starts over, and three save slots in the Saves tab keep separate playthroughs, so comparing two strategies works.

Seminar topics and questions

Here’s where the scenarios fit, with three discussion questions for each topic and the readings their debriefs cite. The questions work best after students have played the scenario and read its debrief.

Budgets and class caps

The Cap Memo, The Dual-Enrollment Drop, The Cap Review, and The Writing Center Budget Swap. This is where the class cap calculator and the staffing planner do the most work.

  1. Who paid for the savings in your Cap Memo decision? Who would pay at your institution, and how would you find out?
  2. Dean Alvarez is moved by local numbers about budget and retention, not by professional standards. When is it still right to argue from principle, and what does that cost?
  3. The writing center is your closest ally and your competitor for the same money. How did you settle the Budget Swap, and what did your decision do to the partnership?

Readings the debriefs cite

  • CCCC, Principles for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing (2015)
  • CWPA, Portland Resolution: Guidelines for Writing Program Administrator Positions (1992)
  • CCCC, Statement on Dual Credit/Concurrent Enrollment Composition (2012)
  • Edward M. White, “Use It or Lose It: Power and the WPA” (1991)
  • International Writing Centers Association, Position Statement on Writing Center Administration
  • Neal Lerner, The Idea of a Writing Laboratory (2009)

Staffing and contingent labor

The Late Hire, the staffing decision any term with uncovered sections needs, and The GTA Stipend Campaign. The Cap Memo belongs here too: the sections that higher caps cut are adjunct sections.

  1. Every way to cover The Late Hire’s empty sections puts the cost on someone: the instructors still teaching, the students who registered, or you. Whose cost did you choose, and would they describe it the way you did?
  2. A standing pool of vetted instructors is cheaper than a crisis, but it has to be built before you need it. What would building one take in your department, and who would have to agree?
  3. In The GTA Stipend Campaign, you’re interim director and a graduate student at the same time. Which role did you act from, and what did the other one cost you?

Readings the debriefs cite

  • CCCC, Statement on Working Conditions for Non-Tenure-Track Writing Faculty (2016)
  • Cox, Dougherty, Kahn, LaFrance, and Lynch-Biniek, “The Indianapolis Resolution” (2014)
  • CCCC, Statement on Preparing Teachers of College Writing (2015)
  • Marc Bousquet, How the University Works (2008)

Common syllabi and curriculum

The Syllabus Holdout, in which a full professor drops the common syllabus, and The Handoff, in which the player decides what to leave the next assistant director.

  1. Alan Pruitt is a full professor, and you’re a graduate student. What could you do on your own, and what needed someone with rank?
  2. Where does academic freedom end, and where does a required course’s obligation to the next course in the sequence begin?
  3. Adjuncts follow the common syllabus because their contracts depend on it. What did they learn from how the program handled a full professor’s exception?

Readings the debriefs cite

  • CWPA, WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition (3.0, 2014)
  • AAUP, 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure
  • Edward M. White, “Use It or Lose It: Power and the WPA” (1991)
  • Susan H. McLeod, Writing Program Administration (2007)

Grade complaints

The Grade Appeal Escalation, in which a parent’s complaint about a grade from a first-year GTA has reached the president’s office.

  1. What could the program tell Mr. Marsh without Dylan’s written consent, and what couldn’t it?
  2. Jordan’s no-late-portfolios rule contradicted the common syllabus. How do you correct a new instructor without undercutting them?
  3. Only the instructor or the appeal process can change a grade. What does it mean for a first-year GTA when an administrator asks for a change?

Readings the debriefs cite

  • U.S. Department of Education, FERPA General Guidance for Students
  • CCCC, Statement on Preparing Teachers of College Writing (2015)

AI-detection pilots

The Detector, in which the provost’s office asks first-year writing to lead a campus pilot of AI-detection software.

  1. A detector score is a likelihood, not a finding. What would a student have to do to answer an accusation built on one?
  2. Integrity cases involving AI tripled, and faculty want help. If you declined the pilot, what did you offer instead, and would it help the instructors who asked?
  3. Who should decide whether a campus licenses a detector: the provost’s office, the faculty senate, the writing program, or each instructor?

Readings the debriefs cite

  • MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI, Working Paper 1 (2023)
  • Weixin Liang et al., “GPT Detectors Are Biased Against Non-Native English Writers” (2023)

Assessment and annual reports

The Accreditation Ask, The DSP Pilot, and the annual report due each spring. Students write one section in Years 1 and 2 and the whole report in Year 3. Reports are never scored; they go in the case files for you to read.

  1. With six weeks before the accreditation visit, what’s the difference between an honest assessment and an impressive one? Which did you build, and who did the reading?
  2. In The DSP Pilot, first-generation students chose the studio course more often than their scores predicted, and multilingual students chose ENGL 101 more often. Were the scores or the choices the better guide, and for whom?
  3. Read your Year 3 annual report as the dean will. What does it ask for, what evidence backs each request, and what will the next director be held to?

Readings the debriefs cite

  • CCCC, Writing Assessment: A Position Statement (2014)
  • Edward M. White, Norbert Elliot, and Irvin Peckham, Very Like a Whale (2015)
  • Brian Huot, (Re)Articulating Writing Assessment for Teaching and Learning (2002)
  • Daniel J. Royer and Roger Gilles, “Directed Self-Placement: An Attitude of Orientation” (1998)
  • Asao B. Inoue, Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies (2015)

Collecting and reviewing their work

  1. Students add their name and course in the Dossier tab’s cover details, so review mode shows their names.
  2. They export a save file from the Saves tab and hand it in wherever you collect work.
  3. You open WPA Desk, choose Instructor review on the start screen, and drop in the whole class’s files at once. They open read-only and stay on your computer. Your own game isn’t touched.

Review mode has three views:

  • Class overview: how far each student got, their decisions and memos, memo words, drafting minutes, saved drafts and revisions, large insertions, reflections, and commitments kept, missed, and open. Download CSV saves it as a spreadsheet.
  • By scenario: how the class chose in each scenario, who chose what, and how many memos persuaded their reader.
  • Case files: each student’s record of every decision (what arrived, what they decided and wrote, what happened, the debrief, and their reflection), plus their annual reports and how the game ended. Memos keep their drafting history, with word-level changes between versions.

Grade the writing and the reasoning, not the ending. Choices and endings can be shared like a walkthrough; memos, reports, and reflections can’t. Drafting history marks large insertions (25 words or more at once) without judging them, since they might be notes, a quotation, or text from somewhere else. Students are told in the memo composer that their history is kept.

If you’d rather collect a document than a save file, students can print their case files to PDF or export them as Markdown from the Dossier tab.

Privacy

WPA Desk runs in the browser, with no accounts, cookies, or analytics. What students write is saved in their own browser and leaves it only when they export a file and hand it in. There’s no copy on a server, mine or anyone else’s.

Two things to tell students: export a file after each sitting, because browsers can clear saved data (Safari does after about a week away), and on a shared computer, clear their saves from the Saves tab when they’re done.

Cost and licenses

WPA Desk is free. The code is under the GNU AGPL 3.0, and the scenarios, characters, and other writing are under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, the same license as my teaching materials. You can adapt scenarios for your class with credit, as long as your version stays noncommercial and is shared under the same license. For anything else, get in touch.

WPA Desk is early, and it changes often. The Log on the project page lists what’s new.

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