Editor’s note: We would like to thank Nathan W. Shank and Isabel Belisle, Oklahoma Christian University, Oklahoma City (Oklahoma), for providing this piece. To contact the authors, please email Nathan W. Shank. If you would like to share your writing center’s experience during COVID-19, please submit via WLN.

Student Director’s Reflection

  Isabel Belisle

This year’s changes were difficult, painful. We encountered a lot of challenges, and we got through them—at least for the most part.

When I began tutoring in Writer’s Block as a second-semester freshman at Oklahoma Christian University’s (OC’s) on-campus writing center, I found my second family. Our weekly meetings were full of laughter, community, and maybe a little drama. During the week, tutors often congregated there during unscheduled sessions. In those days our biggest concerns were marketing the center and problem-solving common issues with international and/or traditional college students.

After Spring Break 2020, campus officially shut down in person. From that point on, online appointments were all we could do to help students with academic papers. I was nervous about my role: how could I manage my peers online? We moved fully online, but would we have any appointments at all?

After the first couple days in an entirely online platform, I gained confidence in managing tutor-student communication. Our team developed a new “best practices” process for each of our scheduled sessions. Tutors now sent an introductory email to students, included a link to the virtual room with appointment instructions, and then sent  a session recording with a synopsis of the discussion and a survey link.

Since this new structure placed more responsibility on the tutors, it required stronger communications among members; it also more clearly defined the power structure within our group. As a leader I was forced to make quick decisions on how to manage technological issues and other mishaps. Incrementally, Writer’s Block adjusted to a life of off-campus learning. In the process, we built stronger tutor-tutor communication and developed multi-checkpoint accountability.

With the anticipated return to on-campus learning this fall, Writer’s Block hopes to retain many of these “best practices” established during the crisis. This COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world as we know it—especially the higher learning community—but its effects are not all negative. At the very least, educational boundaries have been stretched as students and teachers adapt to new learning styles and develop better professional practices.

Director’s Reflection

                  Nathan W. Shank

At Oklahoma Christian University’s Writing Center, the COVID-19 quarantine taught us how to collaborate successfully. We have had to replace real, virulent collaboration with a substitute that works but isn’t quite as good. But the end point of this change is not our successful product alone: our process was the success.

When OC moved its classes online the day before spring break, we didn’t know if we would continue to be funded as an “essential” campus service. Our seven tutors and three writing fellows, all students themselves, were overwhelmed with emails and changes. But after spring break, we met virtually during our weekly staff meeting, and in 30 minutes, collaboration happened like I’ve never seen it before. With vital aid from my Student Director, Isabel, I posed our problem of how to move Writer’s Block fully online by the end of the day. We had used googlechat and googledocs to run online appointments before but with marginal success. For us to transition online so quickly seemed unlikely at best.

But the tutors were ready.

They jumped on the problem, posing solutions for using Blackboard’s software to run video meetings and chats. They had read the online collaboration materials I had sent out over spring break, and using the strategies of successful digital collaboration live, at that very moment they applied those strategies to revise our tutoring model as we videoed and edited a shared googledoc. We would each have our own virtual room, send preview and summary emails, save the recordings online. Our graphic design major tutor adjusted the advanced website settings to make access easier. Writing Majors traded advice on clear communication using the new chat software. A Mechanical Engineering professor who manages the writing fellows jumped on and provided us with needed knowledge from his side of campus. His writing fellows discussed the challenges to their ad hoc appointments. Our googledoc laid out our best practices, which members edited as we worked. In 30 minutes, we had a solid new plan.

In listening back to the recording of that meeting, I realized that I hardly said a word. I’ve always run the Writer’s Block with a laissez-faire leadership style. That approach sometimes works, sometimes fails. But on this day, tutors thrived on their autonomy, and that independence led us to the most successful collaboration I’ve witnessed.