Editor’s note: We would like to thank Ingeborg Marie Jensen and Luna Brodersen
the University of Stavanger, Stavanger (Norway), for providing this piece. To contact the authors, please email Ingeborg Marie Jensen. If you would like to share your writing center’s experience during COVID-19, please submit via WLN.

Left to right: Ingeborg Marie Jensen and Luna Brodersen

For the Study Lab at the University of Stavanger (UiS) in Norway, the recent Covid-19 lockdown has underlined the importance of physical, dialogue-based, reflective tutoring sessions as the main activity of the organization. Since 13 March, when campus was closed off, our tutoring has been digital. Our experience is that the digital form provides more flexibility in the tutoring activity, but also less room for reflection.

Who are we?

The Study Lab is part of the University Library and has since its opening in January 2016 offered free tutoring in academic writing to students of all levels at UiS. Our tutors, who are students themselves, are instructed to use dialogue as their main tool when helping students. Rather than answering their questions directly, our tutors should engage with the students and encourage them to reflect upon their questions so that they may reach a conclusion together. Two tutors are on duty during our opening hours (three hours two days a week), and students seeking help can either drop in for a quick session or book a longer session by email or Facebook.

How did we react to the Covid-19 threat?

When UiS initiated a complete lockdown on 13 March, we immediately moved our activity from our dedicated room on campus to our already established digital platforms. We informed our tutors that they would be working from home until further notice, and an announcement was made on our webpage and our Facebook page that students could still book a tutoring session by contacting us via email or Facebook. Students contacting us with minor questions, resembling our former drop-ins, were answered immediately by Study Lab staff. Students contacting us regarding more advanced issues or actual bookings were forwarded to a tutor who then contacted the student to agree on a platform and a time for the tutoring.

We decided to keep to our regular opening hours. However, we acknowledged that working from home affords more flexibility. Some sessions remained a written email correspondence, but most tutoring was done using MS Teams, Skype, or Zoom. When in a video conversation, our tutors were instructed to turn their cameras on so the students would better know who they were talking to. On 21 April, the University Library launched a digital drop-in helpdesk on Zoom, with a weekly break-out room for the Study Lab.

What was our experience of the lockdown?

We initially experienced a drop in inquires after the lockdown, yet the number of students contacting us soon increased to its pre-lockdown level – though with a shift in demographics: Students who earlier had found it difficult to be on campus during our opening hours, either because they live in remote areas, have day-time jobs, or are parents of small children, now stressed how happy they were with the flexibility which the digital solutions offered.

This corresponds with the findings from the Universities of Stavanger and Agder. In a survey, they asked for their students’ experiences with remote teaching. Students generally prefer on-site teaching to digital teaching, but if it has to be digital, they prefer downloadable resources to digital teaching in real time because of the flexibility these solutions offer (Pedersen, 2020).

Engaging students in dialogue, however, seemed significantly more difficult during digital compared to face-to-face sessions. Written communication in particular seemed to afford more direct and less nuanced language with a tendency for tutors to provide answers rather than invite students to reflect upon their questions. Albeit more resembling genuine conversations, students also seemed less inclined to engage in dialogue during telephone and video sessions, expecting the tutor to act as an instructor instead.

Our tutors additionally report that digital tutoring is more exhaustive than face-to-face tutoring. This experience corresponds with the findings that “we need to work harder to process non-verbal cues like facial expressions, the tone and pitch of the voice, and body language” when talking to someone digitally (Jiang, 2020).

How has the experience changed us?

UiS is slowly reopening, and the Study Lab will return to campus this autumn. Besides considering obvious infection control measures, the Covid-19 lockdown has made us increasingly aware of the importance of offering both on-site and digital solutions. Digital solutions offer greater flexibility – yet, digital conversations invite less reflection. We are working on ways to get the best of both worlds.

Jiang, M. (2020, 22 April). The reason Zoom calls drain your energy. BBC.
Downloaded from: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200421-why-zoom-video-chats-are-so-exhausting

Pedersen, S.J.W. (2020, 29 May). Foretrekker campusundervisning og undervisning i opptak. Downloaded from: https://www.uis.no/om-uis/nyheter-og-presserom/foretrekker-campusundervisning-og-undervisning-i-opptak-article140155-8108.html