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Online Tutoring Discussion

The page contains four sections:

• A comparison of email and face-to-face tutorials
• A discussion of the possible advantages of e-mail tutorials (including an example scenario)
• A discussion of the possible disadvantages of e-mail tutorials (including an example scenario)
• A summary of potential benefits and drawbacks (in table form)

Tutoring via e-mail is (un)like tutoring face-to-face

Tutoring via e-mail can be a lot like tutoring face-to-face because you find yourself in both cases trying to help writers work their way through inevitably messy writing situations. That means that you often find yourself needing more information from a student before you can help. Whether you're working face-to-face or via e-mail, you often need to ask questions such as

• "what's the assignment?"
• "who's your reader?"
• "what's your purpose?"

If someone writes in via e-mail asking you to judge whether an essay is "good" or not, then you need to discuss with the student what "good" might mean, in what setting, for which readers. So don't think that you need to provide an answer right away via e-mail (although something about e-mail makes one feel as if an answer were required right then and there.)

However, remember that e-mail is asynchronous, which means that the all-important period of negotiation in a tutorial is usually impossible to undertake via e-mail (depending on tutorial policy in your writing center). An exchange via e-mail probably does not involve the same level of commitment that a face-to-face tutorial requires. Moreover, by having made the effort to come together at the same time for a face-to-face tutorial, tutor and student have an interest in keeping the exchange going. In an asynchronous exchange, however, the student may not feel particularly compelled to respond to an e-mail message that requests clarification and offers alternatives rather than simply doing what the student thought had been asked in the first place.

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Sometimes the asynchronous character of e-mail is advantageous

Sometimes an asynchronous exchange may give a tutor and student time to ponder questions and responses, whereas a synchronous exchange forces both participants to think on their feet. Occasions arise when that time to digest information and ponder a response is beneficial.

For example, one student once wrote via e-mail late in the Spring semester of 1996 requesting that a tutor look at and comment on the Web (html) version of his résumé. He was working on the Web pages of this résumé for his own sake, and was not facing any particular deadline. By asking a tutor to look through these pages and to get back to him, that student gave the tutor the time to browse through his work, follow links, and build a general sense of what was there.

The tutor reported back to the student within 24 hours, listing a number of impressions, both in navigating the résumé pages and in reading the content of those pages. The tutor also also encouraged the student to think about who his intended readers might be, how they were likely to browse his work, and what kinds of evidence they may be looking for.

In offering such a report, the tutor hoped to provide both a kind of transcript of a user test as well as a rhetorical critique. The student wrote back several days later telling the tutor that he had made a number of changes asking the tutor to take another look. On that second perusal of his résumé pages, the tutor offered a second user response and also focused more on lower-order concerns (because the student's résumé seemed to be nearing a "finished" stage, for the time being). This series of exchanges occurred over the course of a week, and seemed wholly satisfactory to the student, based on his replies.

An asynchronous exchange seemed appropriate in this case, based on the type of text being discussed, a lack of deadlines, and other late-semester priorities.

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Sometimes the asynchronous character of e-mail is a liability

Sometimes, a synchronous exchange is crucial. For example, on Monday, the second of September 1996 (Labor Day), a student wrote the following message to the OWL's e-mail account:

Dear Sirs,

I have an assignment from my English 101 teacher . . . to make a sample essay, which is due on Wednesday. Following this letter, is my essay. I need you to do some corrections on it.

In a face-to-face session, a tutor might begin by asking what the student meant by "corrections." If the student were to explain that she/he wanted the tutor to "proofread" for spelling and grammar, then the tutor could explain that, though her editorial advice may help the student with a better grade in the short run, simply "correcting" a paper would not really help him develop writing skills, and then she can offer options for the tutorial. The student once again has a chance to respond to this, to work with the tutor on clarifying what might be most beneficial in this instance, and to set a particular goal for the session.

An asynchronous exchange, however, severely inhibits that opportunity for negotiation if student and tutor are facing a deadline. Consider again the statement made by that student on Labor Day. Notice that the student mentioned that the paper was due on Wednesday, which the tutor assumed meant that it was due in two days and that the student was asking someone to proofread a final version. If the student and tutor were in synchronous contact, they may have been able to negotiate some sort of meaningful compromise.

The student's message arrived some time Monday morning, and the tutor sent the following reply at 11:58 a.m. that same day:

Hi:

• You sent an essay and asked us "to do some corrections." What kinds of "corrections" did you have in mind? What were you hoping we could help you with? One thing to consider is that we don't proofread papers in the Writing Lab. We're happy to offer advice about thesis sentences, organization, development, etc. We'd also be happy to comment on the wording of a sentence or two. The one thing we can't do, though, is simply "correct" someone's paper. That improves our editing skills, but it doesn't help you as a writer.

  So, please feel free to write again with more detailed directions or questions. Let us know what exactly you're worried about with your paper, and we'll try to help out. Be sure, by the way, to tell us what your assignment is. What kind of essay has your teacher asked you to write? How have you tried to meet the demands of that assignment? Hope to hear from you again soon.

As soon as the message was sent, the tutor suspected that many of the questions would confuse the student. The student's confusion did indeed come through in his second post, sent at 11:21 p.m. that same day:

Hi,

• What I meant by "some corrections" was checking on the grammar, structure, and also vocabulary. The topic was about "Something I remember about learning how to read and write", since I don't remember anything, she allow me to write something I remember about learning English. I hope this letter is clear enough. I really need your help.

  Thank you very much, and I am looking forward to hearing from you soon.

By this point, the tutor's guess about the student being a non-native speaker of English was confirmed, as was the tutor's fear that the student had not quite understood the previous message. Even though the tutor had written that he could not merely "correct" a paper, the student responded by asking the tutor to check "grammar, structure, and also vocabulary." This response still essentially asked the tutor to proofread. (This type of exchange is not peculiar to ESL students, by the way.)

So, on Tuesday, September 3, at 10:05 a.m. (when he had checked OWL e-mail for the first time of the day), the tutor wrote back the following clarification:

Hi:

• You've helped clarify your needs quite a bit. How, though, do you want me to check on grammar, structure and vocabulary? Do you want me to go through and simply "fix" things? Or do you want me to suggest topics that you can work on? I don't simply want to correct things for you because that won't help you learn to take care of such writing concerns on your own.

  For example, I read through your essay and noticed that you occasionally have difficulty with the forms of English verbs. I could try to help you work on the verbs in your paper. That could be the goal of this paper: getting verb forms correct. We could try other things as well (although I know time is short). Your options at this point may be to come in to the Writing Lab in Heavilon 226 to talk with a tutor about an issue such as verb forms. You could call the Lab at 49-43723 to check about tutorial times.

  Or, feel free to write back and let me know what specific aspect of grammar and mechanics you want to work on.

By the time the tutor had sent this message, it was mid-morning on Tuesday, and the student needed help before Wednesday. The tutor checked the OWL's e-mail account several times on Tuesday and Wednesday, but the student never wrote back. This raises a dilemma for tutoring via e-mail: what if the student asks a question that can't be answered in one message? What if a writer asks a question that can't be addressed in one message? Obviously, many questions could best be handled through a give-and-take dialogue between tutor and student.

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Summary: Tutoring via e-mail

The table below lists a number of possible benefits and drawbacks that e-mail may present for students and tutors. Please consider this a partial listing!

Potential Benefits	Potential Drawbacks
E-mail can give tutors and students time to ponder a response to a text or question	Asynchronous nature of e-mail may reduce important "negotiation" time for participants
Students who prefer written communication (e.g., strong writers, those who prefer some "anonymity") could prefer e-mail	Students who prefer oral communication (e.g. poor typists, "technophobes," visual thinkers) may be intimidated by e-mail
Writing center hours could be "expanded" as tutors log in at various time and from various locations	Students may not feel compelled to write back if they don't get the "answer" they're looking for

Original text by Stuart Blythe (June 1997)

HTML coding & revisions by Tracey McHenry (July 1998)

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