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On-line tutoring

Sara, I think you got our situation right, but it was a little 
unclear. I work in a community college center, where we have no 
graduate students or upper-division English majors. Therefore, as 
director of the center, I'm the primary writing tutor. The 8 to 10 
peer tutors I do have run the center's computer lab, including helping 
with the online component as "cyberguides." Barry's graduate students 
are taking courses in cybertutoring and, at the same time, obtaining 
teaching skills that have broadened their scope considerably. 

This relationship has helped both of us, but we don't *have* to do it. 
We choose to do it because (a) it is so effective, (b) the students 
like it so much, and (c) we're having so much fun with it ourselves. 
It has brought me closer to my students, as well, and it is a joy for 
me to sit in my office and hear them laughing at their computer 
screens. (Your comments about the importance of play are right on the 
mark.) And the students revise *much* more than they do in a 
traditional classroom.

And when one of Barry's students, Joel English, successfully defended 
his master's thesis on the MOO this past May (his subject was putting 
students at ease in a virtual reality writing center), it was 
especially pleasing to us...

I would add that there are problems individuals will have to overcome 
with online tutoring, and it's a good deal of work to run a program 
responsibly. But we've been doing it for a year now, and it's 
certainly paying off for our center.

jennifer jordan-henley
jordan_jj@a1.rscc.cc.tn.us
http://fur.rscc.cc.tn.us/cyberproject.html
http://fur.rscc.cc.tn.us/OWL/OWL.html