Keywords
asynchronous, written feedback, ESL, multilingual students, pedagogy, best/effective practices
First Paragraph
About 3.5 million students, or 20 percent of all students in higher education in the United States, are enrolled in at least one online course, according to the most recent survey available. We do not know how many of these students are nonnative speakers of English, but we do know that online education is most firmly established at large public institutions that serve many immigrant, international, and Generation 1.5 students and that large numbers from this population seek help in writing centers. This trend is sure to grow, and writing centers that offer some form of online tutoring—whether it is based on instant messaging, discussion groups, bulletin boards, white boards, informational websites, or email with attachments—are adapting to new media for instruction. For writing centers that have been involved in online tutoring, fundamental questions remain: When the writer is not present to answer questions, how should tutors respond? What does experience tell us works best? Although there are no easy answers, experience can be a good teacher. The tutors at my university learned a few lessons as we developed our online service:
Citation Information
Type of Source: Book Article
Author: Ben Rafoth
Year of Publication: 2009
Title: “Responding Online”
Publication: ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors (2nd edition)
Page Range: 149-160