Editor’s note: We would like to thank Al DeCiccio, Writing Center Coordinator at Mary G. Walsh Writing Center and Professor of English, Salem State University, Salem (Massachusetts), for providing this piece. To contact the author, please email Al DeCiccio. If you would like to share your writing center’s experience during COVID-19, please submit via WLN.

                                Dr. Al DeCiccio (left)

Tutoring remotely is still collaborative learning

We have found that Frost’s speaker in “The Tuft of Flowers” was right: the collaborative relationship that writing center tutors seek to nurture can exist in the virtual environment as well as in the more familiar f2f environment. People “work together . . .  / Whether they work together or apart” (Frost “The Tuft of Flowers,” ll. 41-42).

Physically distant, but socially closer

WCOnline for tutoring has enabled my colleagues and me to tutor writers synchronously and asynchronously. All of us in the Mary G. Walsh Writing Center worked hard to learn the best practices available for using our platform and to assist one another to tutor the writers who needed our advice. We had stumbles, some due to poor connectivity or no user technology, and some due to software limitations (that’s where Zoom or Facetime or WeChat or Skype entered), but we persisted. Not surprisingly, our remote sessions skyrocketed. In seven weeks during March and April, we had nearly three times the number of remote sessions, almost equally divided as synchronous and asynchronous, than we had during sixteen weeks in the fall semester.

Make alliances, gain resources

Harvey Kail was so right when he wrote about how necessary it is for writing center workers to make alliances with their institutions’ stakeholders. Such alliances can help augment limited resources. [pullquote]By establishing alliances, our Writing Center received necessary benefits to tutor effectively during the pandemic.[/pullquote]

The Center Coordinators helped to prepare course-embedded tutors to work with professors teaching writing intensive courses in the University’s vertical writing program. Because the course-embedded tutoring program was an initiative championed by the Dean of Arts and Sciences, she allowed us to hire a Writing Center alumnus, who was gifted tutoring online. This temporary hire was necessary, especially for the tutors-in-training enrolled in the Practicum, as the Center Coordinators were preoccupied with the transition to build an infrastructure for remote tutoring.

The Coordinator of the Writing Intensive Program who oversees the course-embedded tutors helped the effort by building with all Center tutors a Facebook page for tutoring during the pandemic; that page hosted files of best practice strategies for remote tutoring, including a template of chat ice breakers for those unused to typing in real time while tutoring.

Having these two resources during the transition to remote tutoring enabled programming to proceed almost without delay. The tutors-in-training were also prepared to tutor remotely and had several synchronous and asynchronous sessions by the end of the semester.

There was always community

Many writing center workers know how to build community. But most have done that f2f. Still, those moves helped us in the Writing Center to continue the practice virtually. Using Zoom, we were able to come together online every week, sharing what went well and what didn’t. We depended on one another’s strengths. We learned quickly from one another how to adapt when unexpected technology issues arose.

We didn’t back down to the rupture caused by COVID-19; as a result, we gained support and respect from University stakeholders and participants.

From Dr. John McArdle, Assistant Professor, Management to Writing Center Coordinators:

Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed account of what transpired with this student.  I can only imagine how difficult it is to manage providing remote support to students under these conditions, and I am grateful that you are both able to provide what you can.

From Dr. Eric Yitzchak Metchik, Professor, Criminal Justice to Writing Center Coordinators:

I  wanted to write to thank you both very much for all your efforts to make my CRJ400 Research Method students’ visits to the Writing Center so successful this past term. I very much appreciated the detailed feedback that the tutors gave on my students’ drafts and feel it definitely made a huge impact on their final versions.

From graduating peer tutor, Justin Nguyen, to Writing Center Coordinator:

Working in the Center, especially during COVID-19, has done wonders for me as a writer and personally.

Conclusion

It may not be the preferred modality for everyone involved in teaching and learning. Still, since March, educators and students have been asked to tutor, to teach, and to learn remotely. We didn’t need a pandemic to teach us the lesson of Frost’s “Tuft of Flowers.”  But it has sure helped us to use the technological tools we have to work together even though we are apart.