Though early precursors to IM date to the 1960s, instant messaging as we now know it took off in the late 1990s. Some IM programs allow for audio or video chat, desktop sharing, and file exchange, making them rather robust, feature-rich programs. All of this made me wonder if IM might play a useful, official role in our writing center.
Steven Johnson sees the machine not as an attachment to our bodies, but as an environment, a space to be explored (24). Likewise, the spaces that our writing centers now inhabit need exploration and explanation. Although as writing center practitioners and scholars we understand that we cannot necessarily replicate face-to-face (f2f) consultations in virtual writing spaces or even over the phone, our goal at the University of Central Florida (UCF) was to integrate these types of consultations into our existing system without compromising our mission statement and consulting philosophies.
This chapter reports on an instrument that was developed to formatively assess the quality of feedback that second language students give to one another in an online, anonymous, asynchronous learning environment. The Online Peer Feedback (OPF) Assessment was originally developed for a peer online writing center in Japan where student peer advisors jointly compose feedback for a client-writer.
This paper therefore draws on an action research project to explore students’ perceptions of assessment feedback and the impact of an intervention to enhance its use. This paper presents an initial review of this work, highlighting the way that it has developed feedback processes and students’ engagement in self-regulated learning.
Citation Information Type of Source: Book Article Authors: George Cooper, Kara Bui, Linda Riker Year of Publication: 2008 Title: "Protocols and Process in Online Tutoring" Publication: The St. Martin’s Sourcebook…
Keywords synchronous, technology, audio-visual-textual [AVT], distance education, webcams Abstract Able to link tutors across distance while closely approximating the tenor of face-to-face tutoring (f2f), synchronous audio-video-textual conferencing (AVT) is a…
A lack of attention to computers in the writing center extends to the use of word processing programs like MS Word. This article discusses these issues in the context of a case study of one tutor in computer-based tutoring sessions in a writing center.