Ways online tutoring undermines writing center pedagogy

Ø Hobson. Enthusiasm for technological innovations may promote a hierarchy between writing centers on the basis of those that are technologically savvy and those that are not. This may give rise to exclusionary practices that run counter to the goals of the writing center community which aims to celebrate diversity.

Ø Writing centers may also come to be seen as redundant. Although not often posed, this is perhaps the most important question writing centers face as they “[wrestle] with the task of if and how it is possible to take the writing center online with its services and guiding philosophies and value systems intact” (482).

Ø Some OWLs that function merely as resource mediums that provide access to skills and mechanistic activities reinforce the idea that OWLs are grammar centers. This seems to reinforce current-traditional pedagogy that writing centers worked hard to distance themselves from. [This also reinforces the view of writing as an individual as opposed to social activity. The reason for the instrumental approach to technology may stem from the difficulty of updating and maintaining web pages and websites. It may be relatively easy to format a static web page but up keeping them proves to be time-consuming.] Hobson argues that this is misplaced energy in that there is no need for writing centers to create such sites for themselves when they can provide links to such sites.

Ø Harris and Pemberton. Online texts, because of the nature of print, may seemed imbued with more authority than is intended and may replicate current-traditionalist strategies of learning that writing centers seek to avoid. Moving online conversations away from a mere question/answer format to true collaborative discussion requires practice.

Ø The online environment makes it easier for students to appropriate tutor feedback as their own. This raises ethical issues of plagiarism.