Online tutoring increases the pressure to preserve the balance between authority and cooperation. Some worry that OWLs will resort back to proofreading and editing that writing centers worked hard to escape. While synchronous consultations can reduce such fears, asynchronous tutoring predominates. This presents a number of challenges. Asynchronous tutoring has the potential to focus attention on the product and not the process in that the print text and consultants may be invested with more authority than is intended. This may lead to the writer viewing any changes made to drafts as final and the text as closed to revision. Because consultants cannot use the dynamics of the f2f tutorial to establish the nature of the desired tutor-tutee relationship, they need to compensate for this by establishing their roles as peers and not as authorities thereby emphasizing the collaborative nature of the consultation. This can be done by shaping comments in such a way that they underscore that the writer has authority in the tutoring process. The technology can facilitate this in that it encourages short, imperative comments which emphasize the writer’s authority. The principle that writers must retain control over their own writing that is central to f2f tutorials also holds true for online tutorials. This article underscores the importance of the dialogue that is crucial to establishing a collaborative relationship between tutor and tutee that promotes the goals of writing center pedagogy. It shows the way in which this dialogue is hampered in the asynchronous online tutorial. It also emphasizes what many theorists see as the one redeeming feature of the online tutorial – the fact that it encourages focus and clarity in student comments.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Challenges of Asynchronous Tutoring
Ascuena, Andrea and Julia Kiernan. “The Problem of Email: Working to Decentralize Consultant Authority in Online Writing Centers.” Praxis 5.2 (2008): 5 pp. Oct. 2008.
Online tutoring increases the pressure to preserve the balance between authority and cooperation. Some worry that OWLs will resort back to proofreading and editing that writing centers worked hard to escape. While synchronous consultations can reduce such fears, asynchronous tutoring predominates. This presents a number of challenges. Asynchronous tutoring has the potential to focus attention on the product and not the process in that the print text and consultants may be invested with more authority than is intended. This may lead to the writer viewing any changes made to drafts as final and the text as closed to revision. Because consultants cannot use the dynamics of the f2f tutorial to establish the nature of the desired tutor-tutee relationship, they need to compensate for this by establishing their roles as peers and not as authorities thereby emphasizing the collaborative nature of the consultation. This can be done by shaping comments in such a way that they underscore that the writer has authority in the tutoring process. The technology can facilitate this in that it encourages short, imperative comments which emphasize the writer’s authority. The principle that writers must retain control over their own writing that is central to f2f tutorials also holds true for online tutorials. This article underscores the importance of the dialogue that is crucial to establishing a collaborative relationship between tutor and tutee that promotes the goals of writing center pedagogy. It shows the way in which this dialogue is hampered in the asynchronous online tutorial. It also emphasizes what many theorists see as the one redeeming feature of the online tutorial – the fact that it encourages focus and clarity in student comments.
Online tutoring increases the pressure to preserve the balance between authority and cooperation. Some worry that OWLs will resort back to proofreading and editing that writing centers worked hard to escape. While synchronous consultations can reduce such fears, asynchronous tutoring predominates. This presents a number of challenges. Asynchronous tutoring has the potential to focus attention on the product and not the process in that the print text and consultants may be invested with more authority than is intended. This may lead to the writer viewing any changes made to drafts as final and the text as closed to revision. Because consultants cannot use the dynamics of the f2f tutorial to establish the nature of the desired tutor-tutee relationship, they need to compensate for this by establishing their roles as peers and not as authorities thereby emphasizing the collaborative nature of the consultation. This can be done by shaping comments in such a way that they underscore that the writer has authority in the tutoring process. The technology can facilitate this in that it encourages short, imperative comments which emphasize the writer’s authority. The principle that writers must retain control over their own writing that is central to f2f tutorials also holds true for online tutorials. This article underscores the importance of the dialogue that is crucial to establishing a collaborative relationship between tutor and tutee that promotes the goals of writing center pedagogy. It shows the way in which this dialogue is hampered in the asynchronous online tutorial. It also emphasizes what many theorists see as the one redeeming feature of the online tutorial – the fact that it encourages focus and clarity in student comments.
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