For this project I am analyzing the tutor and
student interaction on the interactive online tutoring website Tutor.com.
Alaska’s Statewide Library Electronic Doorway (SLED) provides several resources
to Alaskans, and free online tutoring is one of those sources. Tutor.com offers
tutoring for students at all levels, including elementary and secondary
education and college courses in science, social students, math, and English.
This blog will focus on tutoring in writing at the
college level. While many schools provide on site writing centers and labs to
aid student writing, sometimes the availability of such resources are limited
and/or do not fit a student’s particular schedule. Tutor.com fills that need,
providing live tutoring sessions from 1 pm to 12 am seven days a week. The
University of Alaska Anchorage’s own Reading and Writing Center refers students
who are unable to come to the RWC to Tutor.com through the SLED website.
Students only need to set up a free account to begin tutoring sessions, and the
site provides many benefits to users, including a digital locker to store
assignments, past transcripts and documents from tutoring sessions, and the
ability to mark certain tutors as “favorites.”
When entering a tutoring session for English,
students are prompted with the following screen:
Subject options include vocabulary, grammar,
writing center, and literature. Under the question “How much help do you need?”
students can choose one of three options: I have no clue where to start, I
started but I’m stuck on this one part, or I’m finished, can you make sure it’s
right? The second question under section 2 has various options, from checking
MLA/APA citations to proofreading to brainstorming. Finally, in the third
sections, students have the opportunity to explain further what their
assignment is and what exactly it is they need help with. Students can then upload a file for a review.
Upon entering a tutoring session, the student is
presented with a window consisting of a split screen. On the left side is a
column for instant messaging interaction between the tutor and the student. On
the remaining ¾ of the window is reserved for viewing the paper, where the
tutor “shares” their screen with the student so they can follow along as tutors
insert comments using the “insert comment” function in Microsoft Word.
The tutor also has the ability to share websites
and other resources with the student throughout the session to help students
locate information they may need to write their papers. What makes Tutor.com
interesting is the simultaneous interaction through instant messaging (IM)
while tutors make comments on papers. This differs from previous research that
used email exchange to facilitate online tutoring (Rillings). The synchronous
nature of Tutor.com allows tutors to more readily engage students in the
revision process; the sessions reflect face-to-face tutoring sessions much more
closely. During this study, I will analyze how tutors utilize the duality of
instant messaging and the commenting function in Microsoft Word, as well as the
ability to share other resources with students.
Because of my experience tutoring at UAA’s RWC, I’m
interested to see how this interaction plays out in a digital space. In recent
composition studies, researchers have recognized the process nature of writing
and the RWC has become a valuable resource for students and teachers alike.
Tutor.com and other sites reach out to the vast number of students taking
online courses away from the physical site of the university. In using these
sites, however, we must constantly be analyzing how they best serve the
students and what types of new literacies are required not only of students but
also of the tutors involved in the teaching process.
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