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Re: e-mail tutoring--reply
Date sent: 3-MAR-1997 10:44:11
Bobbie has my vote too. I had just printed outher most recent post for my
owl file when I saw the message on how fine and instructive her posts are.
Thanks, Bobbie!
Mary Dossin
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>Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 15:17:27 -0600
>From: Lynne Belcher <lrbelcher@saumag.edu>
>Subject: Re: e-mail tutoring--reply
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>Bobbie Silk gets my vote for best WCenter posts. (See below
>for one example of why, though I still like the post with the
>gardening analogy.)
>
>Lynne
>lrbelcher@saumag.edu
>
>Bobbie Silk said on Thursday, February 27,
>
>"David's observation that lack of demand can be instructive
>raises a number of questions in my mind. Thank you, David.
>However, while I'm willing to concede that universities may
>value the modernist self David describes, I'm inclined to
>think that even that issue has a pragmatic value and a
>positive as well as negative side in the larger world that we
>inhabit.
>
>What I find most productively thought-provoking are the
>questions about the psychology of the online tutorial. I
>agree that it can be a discursive, collaborative space when
>those values are upheld by the tutor (and, indirectly, the
>director). But I'm not sure that the collaborative, possibly
>multi-vocal quality of online tutoring necessarily contradicts
>single-author assumptions about the final product. Nor am I
>sure that single-author-driven students have considered and
>rejected online tutoring because it is collaborative. In
>fact, I wonder if online writing isn't more (instead of less)
>demanding of a unified, assertive self.
>
>We often talk about our own experience of email and online
>writing in terms of creating an identity, asserting a
>persona. We assume that "real world" social constraints drop
>away when our words flicker through optical cables. We
>assume that this liberates us. And perhaps it does indeed
>liberate those of us who are here, those of us having this
>conversation.
>
>But what if this very absence of social constructs is
>intimidating to some people? What if, for some of us, going
>online is like walking out onto a brightly lit stage in a
>darkened auditorium? We know the audience is out there--five
>hundred pairs of lungs drawing breath, five hundred pairs of
>eyes watching us. And then we have to tap dance our selves
>into being.
>
>Even online writing that asks questions requires
>articulation, a bringing into being through language. And
>because it is writing that asks questions about writing, it
>is inevitably self-reflexive, inevitably drawing attention to
>itself.
>
>When we go online, even one-to-one, we reveal ourselves to
>someone else. In an online chat-room or MOO, I might be able
>to mask or choose my identity; but in the tutorial I (the
>writer seeking help) not only cannot hide, I expose myself to
>criticism of flaws I do not know are there. Unlike the face-
>to-face tutorial, I cannot protect my ego with nonchalance
>or seeming disinterest. In a sense, my ignorance is out of
>the closet in front of an audience or individual I cannot
>see.
>
>In the "discusive space" of the online tutorial, I have to
>ask questions, seek help openly. I cannot shift
>responsibility for exposing my weaknesses to the tutor, who
>is "supposed" to find what is wrong. Perhaps in the f2f
>tutorial we are subtly playing a game of hide and seek in
>which I--the flawed writer--hide in the text and the tutor
>must seek me. Being the one who hides seems much sager than
>being the one who seeks.
>
>In the online tutorial the dynamic shifts. While the tutor
>and I may seem more equal and unknown to each other, thus
>opening possiblities of genuine collaboration and dialogue,
>perhaps in reality we are *less* equal. I no longer have my
>golfer's handicap, my extra points for effort and humility.
>I no longer have the socially-granted controls of engaging
>the tutor's empathy or expressing (through tone and body
>language) that I'm still one tough/smart/worthwhile son-of-a-
>gun even though I'm letting the tutor help
>me.
>
>Maybe where the online help requests come from is less a
>factor of inside/outside and more a factor of
>comfort/discomfort--that is, familiarity with the medium and
>tolerance for lack of control."
>
>Just speculatin'. --Bobbie
>(bsilk@keller.clarke.edu)
>
>
Mary M. Dossin
Claude J. Clark Learning Center
SUNY Plattsburgh
Plattsburgh, NY 12901
518 564-6138
dossinmm@splava.cc.plattsburgh.edu