Katie Quinn

NTWCA Speech – Spring 2006

“A Peer Tutor’s Take on Online Interactions”

On the surface, the online tutorial and the introverted peer tutor seem to be a match made in heaven. Gone are the interminable awkward silences and the sometimes strained attempts to elicit a response. The online tutorial allows the tutor to offer advice from behind the social shield of an impersonal computer. Before I praise the internet and its tutorial innovations too highly, however, it must be noted that, for any writing tutor, providing advice online presents a distinct set of challenges. With each tutorial, one must struggle to avoid overstepping his or her bounds as a tutor. Additionally, written communication without face-to-face contact leaves numerous opportunities for misunderstandings, and even worse, apathy and inattention on the part of both the tutor and the tutee.

Peer tutoring is, by its very nature, somewhat frightening territory. It takes more than a modicum of confidence in your abilities and yourself to enter a room without advanced degrees or even much experience in the field and attempt to teach someone else “how to write”. This is coupled with the fact that the student you are meeting with is not a child or adolescent, but someone your age, sometimes older. And often someone that you know! The unique challenge of the peer tutor in the writing center environment is that he or she is often working with friends, acquaintances, crushes. In other words, tutoring fellow students sometimes involves inverting the social hierarchy.

The faceless nature of online tutorials often removes the social ties that bind. The only link one gives to his or her identity comes in the signature of the e-mailed reply: “Thanks for using our service! Sincerely, Katie Quinn, Peer Tutor.” All of the sudden, the tutor is no longer the fellow college student in jeans and a sweatshirt; though the signature still reminds the student that the tutor is a “peer”, it is more than likely that the student will attribute the advice within the e-mail to the entity of the writing center rather than to one individual.

Despite the freedom that the online tutorial provides, there are some drawbacks to this style of teaching. Naturally, the online tutorial does eliminate the typical camaraderie that develops between peer tutor and student; when tutoring face-to-face, I have a tendency to appeal to the student on a peer level. My general advice tends to be more personal (“When I write papers, I…”) and our introductory discussion often revolves around university or community events. In other words, before I attempt to assume a teaching role, I make it clear that I am a student myself and attempt to relate to the tutee as a fellow student. This rapport, though sometimes merely superficial, does establish a “we’re in this together” mentality. Similarly, humor, often the peer tutor’s most favored tool to break up an awkward tutorial, is also a challenge in online tutorials. In fact, we often avoid humor on purpose just because there are so many ways it could create misunderstandings or accidentally offend. The intonations and facial expressions are lost on the computer and, with these, so is much of the humor and rapport of the tutorial. Without humor and conversation, it is difficult to establish a working relationship for an online tutorial. The lack of back and forth conversation often means that what the tutor says is final. Though the tutor may raise questions or point out concerns, chances are that the student will either address these issues or not; however, regardless of what the student decides to do, the tutor will probably not be informed. This means that, in offering advice via e-mail, the tutor needs to be extremely thorough in his or her explanation and anticipate possible questions the student might have.

A face-to-face tutorial feels like teaching. There is a pupil (hopefully attentive, but at least conscious) sitting in front of you asking questions, responding to comments, raising new issues, actively working with you to revise his or her paper. There is no such luxury with an online tutorial. More often than not, the student submits her paper from her home computer with a few vague comments about the assignment and perhaps a few buzzwords like “grammar” and “punctuation”. The tutor likely opens this e-mail minutes, sometimes hours later, in a completely different location with only the information the student has provided to work with. With vague guidelines and sometimes extremely challenging papers, it is sometimes difficult for the tutor to not fall into the practice of editing. When a sentence sounds awkward in a face-to-face tutorial, the tutor and student will often brainstorm revisions or new sentences together. But what about during an online tutorial? Should the tutor comment “Awkward. Needs revision” only? Or should he or she suggest possible sentence alternatives? While suggesting alternate ways to phrase things might be perfectly acceptable in a face-to-face tutorial, the online medium gives the student the opportunity to simply “cut and paste” a tutor’s suggested sentence into his or her paper. Suddenly the tutor has crossed a line by doing something that would be completely appropriate in a typical tutorial. Often, the best the tutor can do is gauge the student’s individual situation, skill level, and integrity and offer advice accordingly.

Perhaps the greatest danger presented by the online tutorial is apathy. The informal, do-it-yourself nature of the online tutorial allows both tutor and student to look at the paper outside the context of the traditional tutorial. The tutor may be interrupted several times during an online tutorial by the ringing phones and waiting clients at the writing center. In turn, the tutee may read the tutor’s comments and make revisions while chatting with friends or watching television. There is no stark cubicle for the two parties to sit in, forcing them to pay attention to the task at hand. Of course, as tutors we all like to think that we are giving each tutorial our full consideration. The fact of that matter is, however, that the computer does not require eye contact and invested interaction from either party. Online tutorials, therefore, demand the tutor’s utmost engagement and focus. Although we cannot ensure that the student will give our response the same attention, we can encourage active participation throughout the tutorial by asking open-ended questions and avoiding direct corrections.

The loss of face-to-face casual discourse is accompanied by the heightened requirement for professionalism and correctness in e-mail correspondence. Suddenly, the tutor must carefully watch his or her own writing, making sure no typographical errors or grammatical hiccups appear in the response to the student. Even small inaccuracies, once they are written and sent, can affect the tutor’s credibility with the individual student and perhaps with the writing center in general.

Finally, there is something to be said for the rewarding feeling one gets after successfully completing a face-to-face tutorial. As a tutor, it is wonderful to witness a “lightbulb” moment and see someone finally understand something they didn’t before. Such moments do not occur with online tutorials; even if the student does learn something from the tutor’s response, chances are the tutor will never hear about it. During particularly frustrating moments on the job, the peer tutor sometimes needs reassurance that they are helping their fellow students and making a difference and this sort of validation rarely comes from online tutorials.

Although the online tutorial allows the nervous tutor some measure of anonymity and the gregarious tutor the opportunity to think before speaking, this type of tutorial presents several concerns for the writing center. First and foremost, tutors must recognize and closely observe their ethical limits. These boundaries are much easier to overstep in online tutorials, so a tutor must make a constant conscious effort to avoid “doing” instead of teaching. Additionally, the tutor must be prepared to go the extra distance to engage the student so that the student will learn something from the tutorial, even if he is not giving it his full attention. The online tutorial, like so many revolutions of the technological age, is both a blessing and a curse. Though there is something to be said for the convenience and relative anonymity of e-mail interaction, the online tutorial demands that student and tutor go the extra mile.