Re: e-mail tutoring

[becky.rickly@umich.edu (Becky Rickly)]

Mickey, our situation sounds opposite yours--we get maybe 1-10 grammar
questions a week, and the rest of the time we get papers, resumes, letters,
proposals, etc.  In our web form we ask for students to describe
specifically the type of help they're looking for, and while some are very
specific, others simply say "check to see if it flows"  or "tell me when
I've made a grammar/mechanical error", so I suppose these could be
considered grammar checks, too. But when we get these, or those that say
"please proofread this" (though we say we won't in the text), we use it as
either an interactive opportunity--if the due date is a way away, we open a
dialogue w/ the student asking for specifics--and if there's no time, our
tutors explain that they'll give them an educated reader response, letter
them know what "worked" for them as a reader and what didn't.

We have a limited peer tutoring budget, and our f2f opperation is often
overflowing (while the ECB professors DO take writing workshop
appointments, the peer tutors don't; it's solely walk in service), so we
tell folks about the OWL then or when they're waiting to be served.  We
also are set up in the middle of a HUGE computer lab, so folks already have
access to email and the web and word processors where they write.  We get
anywhere from 30-200 papers a month, depending on time of year.

I also think that some OWLs are more inviting than others to send papers
to.  OWLs like the Online Writery, or, I like to think, the University of
Michigan OWL, are easy to navigate, and they provide a simple form to send
in papers w/ important information, encouraging interaction.  Our students
*love* to surf the web, so they feel comfortable sending papers through the
web.

--Becky

At 7:54 PM 2/26/97, Muriel Harris wrote:
>Lady, are you getting much oncampus traffic for your online tutoring?
>The e-mail part of our OWL gets zillions of requests for handouts, but
>that's automated and doesn't take up any of our time. We get about ten
>or so questions a day, but almost all are from off-campus. Our
>students seem much more inclined to check our Web page, and we're
>experimenting with online tutoring through CU-SeeMe, but that's just
>at the earliest stages of investigation. Our experience with e-mail
>interchanges is that it's mostly a grammar hotline. There are some
>very interesting exchanges with some writers, but they are not as
>frequent as the requests for "right" answers.
>
>>From some of the posts I've read here, I gather that many of us are
>not finding great enthusiasm from our students for this kind of
>e-mail exchange. But there are some success stories too. So, it's a
>mixed bag?
>
>--
>Mickey Harris
>harrism@omni.cc.purdue.edu