First Paragraph
For more than thirty years, Seton Hall University’s Writing Center served predominantly first-year writers. Then, in 2000, we launched an online writing lab (OWL) as an e-mail-based system in which upper-class and graduate students could send essays as attachments to a central account, and undergraduate and faculty OWL tutors would read and respond via e-mail. After several years of working with the OWL, we wondered about the efficacy of the program in general and about the effectiveness of faculty tutors’ responses in particular. We know that tutoring pedagogy is student-centered, based on Kenneth Bruffee’s work in “disrupting . . . traditional teacher-centered activities” and validating “collaborative learning practices” (qtd. in Gillam 39). And while the work of student tutors (both face-to-face and online) has been scrutinized by writing center scholars and professionals (and summarized especially well by Hewett & Ehmann 33-37), the value and work of faculty tutors, who still exist, has not been as closely analyzed. David Coogan did report his work on e-mail-based tutoring with his own tutees and graduate student tutors, but he did not focus particularly on faculty as tutors (32). So, as we continued our work with faculty and student tutors, we wondered whether there is, indeed, a significant difference between faculty tutors and student tutors in our online setting.
Citation Information
Type of Publication: Newsletter Article
Author: Kelly A. Shea
Year of Publication: 2011
Title: “Through the Eyes of the OWL: Assessing Faculty vs. Peer Tutoring in an Online Setting”
Publication: Writing Lab Newsletter, Volume 35, Issue 7-8
Page Range: 6-9