JJ 7

I have yet to begin online/asynchronous tutoring but my initial impression (prior to the readings this week) was that the non face-to-face methods is an ersatz tutoring style. I was partially convinced by the readings that there are advantages in a more distanced approach to tutoring that are lacking with in-person sessions. Specifically, there is an element of anonymity associated with online tutoring that I can see appealing to students that may not be confident or are embarrassed about their writing, especially students that are more introverted and non-confrontational. As a tutor, asynchronous tutoring would give me the time to really digest the writing and carefully formulate a response. Sometimes after an in-person session I think back about better ways I could have phrased a certain point but by then, too late. A major take-away from the readings is that I will formulate my responses through the comment feature and rarely using track changes, if at all. I believe that carefully worded notes (implicit/explicit models) would be more helpful to the student even though they may be looking for a quick and painless edit job.

Comments

  1. IanMarch 4, 2019 at 8:25 PM

    Ersatz or not, I think there's also something to be said for the speed at which students are able to receive feedback via online/written feedback. To my mind, much of the time in a 30-minute or 60-minute tutoring session is invariably taken up by real-time analysis/commentary. Though this mental work doesn't go away for us, I do think there's a way (at least for more advanced students) in which providing a rundown of main issues is maybe the highest quality service we can offer. Of course none of this is applicable if what the student really needs is to talk out their problems, but if they are instead trying to just quickly understand what problems they aren't already seeing, then I think written feedback is the way to go.

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  2. TiffanyMarch 5, 2019 at 9:23 AM

    To piggy back off of the later end of Ian's comment and thinking back to one of the earlier chapters of the Bedford guide, I think that many students have trouble expressing their points on paper or finding the most specific examples. Usually students like this have the ideas, they just need to talk through them with someone else. We have all had the experience of a student explaining something to you that is far clearer than what they have written, and then you say, "well, why don't you just write that." With both of the students I have via the enrollment program this is the case. I'm concerned about how that will play out in an online context because these are students that have trouble expressing their points on paper without verbalizing them first.

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