Methodologies

Methodologies for this kind of research typically address the following questions:

1) Site--Where did you conduct your research? Why?

2) Participants--Who did you study in your project? Why?

3) Self--What role did you play in your site?

4) Data--What kinds of data did you collect? How did you collect it?

5) Analysis--How did you analyze your data?

6) Tradition(s)--What major research tradition(s) did you draw upon to conduct your study?

Site: My research is based around tutoring interaction at the website Tutor.com, a service free to Alaska residents provided by the Statewide Library Electronic Doorway website (or SLED). I chose this site because it is publicly funded and available for free, whereas other online tutoring sites have costs attached and I was unsure of their credibility. I knew about Tutor.com from UAA’s reading and writing center; as a past tutor, I know that the RWC recommends this resource to distance students, students who seek tutoring outside of the RWC’s normal hours, and students who are unable to be helped at the RWC on busier days like those around finals week.

Participants: The participants for my research are myself and the tutors that I interact with on the website in reviewing my own papers.

Self: I will be acting as a participant in the role of a student, or as Tutor.com labels users, as a “customer.”

Data: The majority of my data will be instant messaging exchanges between myself and my tutor(s). I will also refer to the papers themselves, as tutors can make comments and suggestions on the documents submitted for review.

Analysis: I will be analyzing my data using Haas’s 15 item taxonomy of instant messaging features. I will also take notes on any confusion I may have felt and how the general tutoring environment was established at the beginning of each session.

Traditions: I will drawing heavily from Sarah Rilling’s article “The development of an ESL OWL, or learning how to tutor writing online” to establish the ways in which an online writing lab (OWL) can emulate that of a physical writing lab, and also the ways in which the OWL is limited. These aspects of the lab are important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each lab and to understand how to best utilize the online space for composition tutoring. I will also draw on other theories surrounding digital learning and literacies in order to establish the validity of online tutoring and how it can be extremely beneficial to all types of students.

Synthesis of Related Research

In submitting several papers to the site Tutor.com, I have found the communication between tutor and student to be key in a successful tutoring session. This is no different than that emphasized in a face-to-face tutoring session, where the tutor must establish an environment of safety, comfort, and ease in which the student feels able to interact with the tutor and their paper in order to make changes to their writing. Tutor.com and other Internet tutoring/teaching sites all lack the ability to have that face-to-face interaction, however, and that environment must be established through the use of instant messaging.

Sarah Rilling’s article “The development of an ESL OWL, or learning how to tutor writing online” has been helpful in understanding how the physical space of a writing center can be duplicated online. In creating an English as a second language Online Writing Lab (OWL), the article documents the capabilities of the OWL and how to best tutor students online in the area of writing, not only for ESL students but also for students in various disciplines. Rilling pays special attention to the space of the writing lab, and how those aspects can be duplicated in an online environment:

“Writing centers are often multifunctional physical environments, with a range of spaces, including areas for textual resources, such as dictionaries, grammars and style manuals, areas for tables and chairs for writers and tutors to work together and consult with assignment specifications (for example, a handout from a professor), and areas with armchairs or sofas for those who prefer to discuss ideas and idea development. Several of these functions can be easily replicated in the online environment (Miraglia & Norris, 2000). Resources, such as online dictionaries and thesauri, can be linked directly to an OWL’s homepage. Tutors and students can interact in real time generating ideas for a writing project in a Multi-User Domain, Object-Oriented (MOO) or through instant messaging (IM), for example, or they can work asynchronously by exchanging electronic texts through email attachments or paste-in web forms. Other aspects of a physical writing center may be more difficult to emulate. Students may fail to share the assignment specifications from the professor with the tutor, leaving the tutor to guess what the goals of a writing assignment might be. In addition, students often submit writing to an OWL with little time for negotiating the meaning with the tutor, as the student may expect the tutor to simply edit the text and quickly return it for minor modification and course submission.” (Rilling 359)

She identifies the areas in which an OWL can be limited but also notes the ways in which it can function just as a physical writing lab does. This article points out distinct differences and limitations of the OWL compared to physical labs (physical meaning the actual space of a writing lab, and does not mean to diminish the integrity of the OWL as being “less” physical, but only is being used here to distinguish which writing lab is being referred to).

Another article uses ESL (or what they refer to as L2) students and draws on Vygotski’s activity theory. Li Jin and Wei Zhu’s article “Dynamic Motives in ESL Computer-Mediated Peer Response” was “[i]nspired by Leont’ev’s proposition of human motive/object as well as Kuutti’s (1996) view of computer mediation at the activity/motive level,” in which they “examined the role of technology in two ESL students’ participation in three CMPR (Computer-Mediated Peer response) tasks with a focus on (1) the students’ motives when participating in CMPR and (2) the mediation of technology (i.e., instant messaging) in the formation and shift of the students’ motives” (286-287). This article will be especially helpful in identifying certain aspects of instant messaging communication that proves to be helpful when engaging with students about their writing.

From class, Christian Haas article “Young People’s Everyday Literacies: The Language Features of Instant Messaging” can provide the framework to analyze instant messaging conversation. This article gives certain keywords that will be helpful in analyzing the interaction between student and tutor, as well as identifying some key instant messaging features that can be helpful when interacting online.

I’ve found several other articles that may be helpful in analyzing online tutoring and Tutor.com specifically, but have yet to read through them to gauge their relevancy to this subject. While it appears not many articles have been written about tutoring online specifically, there are several other similar ideas surrounding technology, online interaction, and teaching writing that can still be applied to this area, and I’m looking forward to seeing how those connections can be made and applied.