Personal Experiences with Online Tutoring

The only real experience I have had with online instruction, tutoring, etc. was in the writing center last semester, and it was not exactly a positive experience for me. Although I appreciate the ability to read, comment, and chat with students about their writing in “real time” (as oppose to someone sending me an e-mail attachment, making comments, and sending the document back), there was often such a lag in between communication that the one-to-one interaction (as Casey mentioned in his posting) was laborious or completely lost. For example, say a student pastes their paper into the whiteboard and I start to read (let’s just say). ;-) I ask about the assignment, get the usually short answers like, “It’s a persuasive essay,” and then I continue reading. I come across something I feel needs attention and type, “You said this is a persuasive piece, yet you don’t tell the reader what your position is in the introduction, what points you will use to support your position, or even the importance of your topic…could you brainstorm or answer those questions for me? And then, several minutes later, I will get one of two possible responses: “Umm, not really. Can’t you just edit it?” or some lengthy answer that actually addresses my question; either way, there is a huge disconnect (the former being the student fiddling with other things on their computer, leaving the room, doing whatever – not to mention completely misunderstanding what a writing center does; the latter being the student engaging with me, but the wait-time creating an environment where not as much gets accomplished). So, as Nikki described in her posting, I suppose I haven’t had the same experiences as Hewett and Ehmann. Regardless, I do see the necessity of online learning and tutoring (distance education can be a wonderful thing), but I’m a little reluctant in terms of its pedagogical effectiveness (i.e. how much are students really learning and is anything missing because there is no face-to face communication?)