This week, we’re taking a direct look at online tutoring in the Writing Center. While we all have experience with online spaces now, because of the pandemic (obvs), the online writing tutorial has been around for quite awhile, and a ton of research has been done in this area. With this in mind, I’ve included three readings about online writing tutorials – one of these was written mid-pandemic, and the other two were written before the pandemic began. These readings explore both synchronous and asynchronous approaches, as well as the myths, benefits, drawbacks, and problems of online tutoring. They also offer specific strategies for conducting an online writing consultation that you might find useful heading into the final individual consultation.
Just as a note: I intentionally didn’t assign this week earlier in the quarter because it would conflate two very different things. That is, while a lot of what we have been doing over the last few years has been online, it hasn’t really been online tutoring. For broader understanding of what I mean, feel free to check out the Online Writing Centers Association, to see just how much research and history has gone into this field (and how intentionally and carefully folks who do online writing consulting think about their approaches, policies, etc.). Online writing centers have gone far to consider how online tutoring – both synchronous and asynchronous – can be especially helpful in terms of addressing issues of access, disability, and equity.
In addition to discussing the readings this week, you’ll also be discussing the Final Project (due Monday, 6/8) and Work in Progress Updates (due Monday, 6/1). Use this time to really talk through where you’re going with all of this, what questions you have, any confusion or concerns you have, and how you’re feeling about both aspects overall.
Here are the tasks for this first week group discussion (follow the links for a more detailed explanation):
- Complete the follow-up activities
- Talk about ChatGPT (and other Generative AI)
- Talk about the material
- Discuss the WIPU and Final Project
1. Complete the follow-up activities
As I mentioned above, I have added this to the agenda today in order to ensure that we’re covering everything we can. In your groups, go through and complete the activities outlined below. Make sure someone takes notes and that someone is ready to share with the rest of the class once we get back together from group work.
Exploring the Handouts and other Resources
On Monday, I had you do the following:
- Go to the handout page from CLAS
- Pick two handouts/worksheets to look through
- With those examples in mind, consider and take notes about the following:
- What do they have in common?
- What are their purposes? How do they establish those purposes?
- Do they include examples? How so?
- What do you think works really well? How do you think they might be improved?
- Who would they help? Etc.
Now, I would like you to share what you looked at, what you came up with, and what takeaways you arrived at. We’ll talk about this in relation to tutoring, writing, and the additional work option.
Identifying the Core/Center/Takeaway
On Monday, I had you do the following:
- Take a few minutes to write out 2 central claims that you could make with your research.That is, write out two possible takeaways that you would want your readers to get from reading your final project. (Even if you know exactly what direction you’re heading in, you should still write out two.)
- Now, with one of those claims, think through and write about why you think it’s important for that claim to be made. Who does it help? What does it reveal? What other opportunities does it create? Really just think through why it matters and to whom.
- Now, try to think of any personal experiences you’ve had that relate to the issue(s) that you’re researching and write a bit about how they relate: do they support or refute or complicate your claims? How so?
Now, talk through this process with your group members and explore directions you could go, challenges you encountered, just the general overall process of thinking through things in a grounded way like this.
2. Talk about ChatGPT (and other Generative AI)
While we don’t have readings about this explicitly for the week (other than the optional reading I recently added), I imagine we all do have some familiarity with and thoughts about this topic. In your groups, I want to give you some time to think through the implications of generative AI — how you envision it influencing and/or affecting writing and the writing process, and how you think this might involved the work of writing centers specifically. Just take some time to think through and talk about your experiences and feelings about generative AI and how you think it can relate to things we’ve talked about in class. Try to come up with a couple of takeaways that we can explore as a class when we all reconvene.
3. Talk about the material (readings & videos)
As I mentioned above, we’re talking directly about Online Writing Center work this week. Most of you have plenty of experience in dealing with both the benefits and challenges of the online environment, so I imagine you’ll have a lot to say about this week’s readings. Again, though, try to keep in mind that while we have all been forced to move online at some point in our educational experiences, the majority of what Online Writing Centers do is all about folks who choose this option.
- In Dr. Lisa Bell’s blog for WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, “Rethinking What to Preserve as Writing Centers Move Online”, she is responding directly to the needs of the pandemic. Written in July 2020, Bell “provides an overview of the strengths/cautions of online tutoring and argues that despite all these changes, what we need to preserve is the writing center’s ethos of being flexible and adapting to the needs of our students.”
- In the materials from this 2018 conference presentation, writing center folks, Kelsey Torgerson, Josh Parrill, and Allison Haas, from the University of Minnesota Crookston, directly address “concerns and misconceptions about online tutoring,” as they “suggest best practices for developing a tutoring program that serves the needs of online students.” (Read the transcript, but you can also check out the power point presentation under “Presentation Materials.”)
- Written for The University of Wisconsin – Madison, Maggie Bertucci Hamper’s blog, “The Online Writing Center is About Equity for Students (and You Too),” makes several convincing arguments about the benefits of the online writing center. She uses stats and statistics to directly address the students of UW-Madison, but her approach has ultimately appealed to a much wider audience.
Possible Topics for Reading Discussion
- After going through the readings, what are your thoughts about Online Writing Centers? How do you think your experiences with online instruction either support, contradict, and/or complicate the assertions/claims of these authors?
- What are your main takeaways from the readings? What do you see as a central underlying principle for Online Writing Centers?
- How have your experiences aligned with the strategies offered by the folks from the University of Minnesota? Is there anything you think they overlook? Oversimplify? Is there anything they suggest that would have been useful to know earlier on?
- What are your thoughts on synchronous versus asynchronous approaches to online tutoring? What are the benefits of each? Drawbacks?
- How do you feel about the various ways that Online Writing Centers help address issues of equity, access, and disability? Are there ways that we could incorporate similar effects into other, more traditional writing consultation approaches?
4. Discuss Final Project and Work in Progress Presentations
Again, I want to make some space for you group to discuss the Final Project as well as the Work in Progress Updates (WIPUs). The WIPUs are really just a chance to talk through your progress with your final project, to articulate where you are, what you’re planning to do, and what questions you have or feedback you want. Inspired by both writing center approaches and practices of scholars in the field, they are super low-key, but also super helpful for thinking through your ideas and writing.
Use this time to check in with one another, help address any confusion about anything, and really just try to make things more manageable for everyone as we head into the end of the quarter madness. (As always, just let me know if you or any group members have any questions about anything.)