Editor’s note: It was my pleasure to meet Clint Gardner in person at IWCA this year and hear more about PeerCentered. The Director of the Salt Lake Community College Student Writing Center, he currently serves as Archivist for the Two-year College Association (TYCA) of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). On his website, Clint shares that “having worked in writing centers for over two decades, I have learned a great deal about writing center theory and practice, one-to-one instruction, peer tutoring, the role of writing centers at two-year colleges, as well as the uses of computers in composition classrooms and in the writing center. My role as Student Writing Center Director at Salt Lake Community College allows me to teach writing to students from diverse backgrounds, as well as to teach tutors how to respond more effectively to their peers. ” Below, Clint shares more about the past, present, and future of the PeerCentered community!
PeerCentered started out in 1998 as an online text chat for peer tutors. The concept was simple: allow an online space for peer tutors to continue the kinds of discussions that they were having at conferences such as the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing and other more regionally-based writing center conferences such as the Rocky Mountain Peer Tutoring Conference. Initially, the discussions were held weekly, and had a fair number of peer tutor and writing center professional attendees from various institutions around the United States, but we did have one writing center professional join in from Europe on occasion. Time zones do interfere with such live discussions. In the early days, peer tutors did outnumber professionals by a considerable amount—something that would change over time. The live chats were initially held weekly—then monthly—and then finally just a few times a year, mostly due to the difficulty in sticking to such a schedule by the main organizer—me! I fear I realized far too late that I could have turned over the organization and the moderation of the live chats to peer tutors themselves.
After playing around with asynchronous discussion forums which never really took off, I decided to add a blog to PeerCentered as a means of having peer tutors share their experiences in that media with others from around the world. The blog has been moderately successful, given that there have been over 750 postings, and more than 1,100 comments in its 14 year history. PeerCentered averages over 5,000 page views per month, during the typical school year. Contributors have written on a variety of topics ranging from practical tutoring techniques, to more theoretical discussions of how peer tutoring works, language acquisition, or the student’s right to his or her own language, for example.
The one thing the blog has never achieved despite a fair number of comments, however, is a true discussion. Commenters and blog contributors rarely interact in the comment sections of the blog. It seems, as well, that many contributors just post once, and then fly the scene, never to be heard from again. This, no doubt, is due to the fact that various writing center directors (yours truly included) have required their tutors to post to peer centered. Because the posting is not of their own volition, such tutors seem to have little investment in the blog. The blog has also featured podcasts, as well, but given the amount of work put into such endeavors, they too have never really taken off with contributors.
More recently, I’ve been striving to get back to the online chat nature of PeerCentered by hosting irregular live chats through more advanced systems such as Google Hangouts. Such systems allow users to hear and see each other, or still communicate via text chat. While many people prefer text chat, it seems that more people are willing to at least let themselves be heard online. The live discussions have featured special guests—usually authors of articles or books. While there are some peer tutors who have showed up to these discussions, the majority of attendees have been writing center professionals.
In order to get PeerCentered back to its roots and get peer tutors involved in it again, I’ve most recently decided to try to recruit peer tutor moderators for a series of online discussions in 2016. While there have been no applicants yet, I hope that the beginning of the new year will bode for renewed interest.
Have a question or comment for Clint and PeerCentered? Comment below!
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