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.