Re: the tutee's privacy

[anne mullin <mullanne@isu.edu>]

Noreen Lape wrote:
> 
> I am currently involved in establishing a writing center at my
> university.  In one of our planning discussions, we thought about
> having tutors send brief reports about the tutoring sessions to the
> tutee's instructor.  We also talked about having a sign-in book that
> instructors could have access to if they wanted to see if a student
> had been receiving tutoring.
> 
> Does anyone know if allowing the instructor to know about a student's
> tutoring session legally violates that student's privacy?  Is it
> common or not common practice to keep the tutee's
> instructor informed?
> 
> Noreen Lape
> Department of Language and Literature
> Columbus State University
Noreen -- this is always a good discussion on WCenter.  At ISU we do
send reports to the instructors and it works very well for us.
INstructors really appreciate it, the students who try to tell their
instructors they've come here when they haven't are discovered, if
there's a question about why a student's paper had so many mechanical
errors even after the student came to the Lab, we can look up the file
and see that the student came to a tutor for brainstorming only and did
not come back to work on error patterns, etc.  Students are protected in
that they sign a consent form acknowledging that the report will go to
the teacher to verify what they worked on -- many tutors have the
students participate in filling out the form. Our students often remind
the tutors about being sure to send the form because they know our
instructors value the Lab and are pleased when their students come. Over
the past 8 years, I only know of 3 students who asked us not to send the
form -- and we did not.  In the past many helpful and lively comments
have followed queries such as yours.