Keywords
asynchronous, written feedback, email, accessibility, bias, consultant anxiety, dialogue, prejudice, privacy, meaning, interpersonal relationships, research study, transfer
First Paragraph
The premises for online tutoring are noble–to improve access to campus writing centers and to narrow distances between students and tutors. Time constraints, proximity, and introverted personalities often keep students from attending tutoring sessions. Computer technology can bring students and tutors closer together, overcoming the distance that may exist. The desire to span this distance prompted the writing center staff at California State University at Fresno (CSUF) to develop an online tutoring program. However, thinking about how to overcome obstacles between tutors and students via the INternet opened new challenges. In particular, the idea of distance becomes more complex when writing centers support both face-to-face and online tutoring. As distance is lessened by increasing access, what happens to the relationship between student and tutor? What happens as tutors respond through a faceless, expressionaless computer screen? For us, the face-to-face relationship is one of the joys, as well as a reason for success, in a tutoring session. With online tutoring, this relationship is severed. The tutoring table is replaced with a computer screen: cold, sterile, and, to many, uninviting.
Citation Information
Type of Source: Book Article
Authors: David A. Carlson, Eileen Apperson-Williams
Year of Publication: 2000
Title: “The Anxieties of Distance: Online Tutors Reflect”
Publication: Taking Flight with OWLs: Examining Electronic Writing Center Work (edited by James A. Inman and Donna N. Sewell)
Page Range: 129-140