Online Tutoring: A Symbiotic Relationship with Writing across the Curriculum Initiatives.

Abstract

This article emphasizes the need for writing centers to give continued attention to online tutoring to achieve writing across curriculum (WAC) goals. The article offers a literature review covering the history and state of online tutoring and its relation to the WAC movement and writing fellows programs. We at Saint Joseph College have found that by expanding our online tutorial services, we have significantly increased our abilities to support the teaching of writing across the disciplines. The Saint Joseph College writing associates program, our writing fellows program, is described in the article, with an emphasis on the inclusion of online tutoring. Overall, we believe the technology holds great promise for bolstering WAC initiatives and helping writing centers achieve increased prominence on their campuses. Data from surveys administered to students who used online tutoring, writing associates, and faculty who collaborated with the associates support this belief. Providing online tutoring to supplement our in-person tutorials, especially within the writing associates program, has myriad benefits, including extending the writing center's reach in the campus community, contributing to students' understanding of discipline-specific writing conventions, and promoting the belief that writing is essential to academic success. Over the last several decades, trends have converged regarding the teaching of writing in higher education in relation to writing across the curriculum (WAC), writing in the disciplines (WID), writing centers, and writing fellows programs. These trends reveal that often fellows programs are run through writing centers and that fellows attend classes, read course texts, and collaborate on assignment design. Invariably, fellows, like writing tutors, help students with papers in progress. Although WAC, WID, writing centers, and writing fellows form a natural nexus, the value of technology in this mix is not firmly established. In addition, as was noted in a review of the 2006 WAC Conference at Clemson University, the WAC movement is at a stage of midlife crisis characterized by a stasis (Thew & Gustafsson, 2007). On the other hand, technology on college campuses is rapidly changing. The role that online tutoring and other technology tools will play in supporting WAC, WID, writing centers, and fellows work, is thus still evolving. We at Saint Joseph College have found technology, particularly in the form of online tutoring, has raised the status of the writing center, contributed to WAC initiatives, and helped build a successful, wellrespected writing associates (fellows) program. We began the writing associates program in 2007 after firmly establishing our online tutoring program, and thus online tutoring was integrated as part of the program. The writing associates program provided us with a way to mix face-to-face and online tutoring, Arzt, Barnett, and Scoppetta 2 creating a hybrid tutoring format that combines the benefits of both traditional face-to-face models and emerging online tutoring technologies. Based on our experiences with developing a hybrid online and in-person tutorial model, we offer this article as a contribution to the literature that highlights the potential of technology to contribute to the future of WAC, WID, and writing fellows movements. Our message is that expanding online tutoring services beyond the writing center to these other areas has the potential to reinvigorate writing initiatives on campuses.