Tag: online tutoring

Support for anxious writers: The six stages of an undergraduate online writing retreat

~ Brian Hotson

Vol. 6, No. 2 Fall 2024

Sarah King, Writing Support Coordinator, Centre for Teaching and Learning, University of Toronto Scarborough

When I was an undergraduate, I found academic writing assignments highly stressful. Books would pile up on my residence room floor, as I researched but put off writing until the very last minute, ultimately pulling all-nighters and submitting half-baked ideas. I think that’s why I’m sympathetic to anxious students and perhaps why, in the dark, middle days of the pandemic, I devised a way to make the graduate writing group techniques of freewriting, goal-setting, and timed writing useful for undergraduates. I called these “writing retreats,” students greeted them with enthusiasm, and our writing centre is still offering them regularly. Continue reading “Support for anxious writers: The six stages of an undergraduate online writing retreat” →

Celebrating writing: The annual Pizza Party Writing Workshop

~ Brian Hotson

Vol. 5, No. 8 (Spring 2024)

Stevie Bell, Associate Professor, York University

Despite how writing instructors like me might feel about writing, students don’t always feel as though it is the most fun aspect of their scholarly or professional lives. Several years ago, in pre-Pandemic times, I initiated a transition workshop for incoming, first-year students focused on sharing a love and enthusiasm for writing. My goal was to reframe writing for incoming undergraduate students as a rich site of interest and community at university. I wanted the Writing Centre’s most public-facing work, our workshops, to do as much as possible to promote prosocial, support-seeking behaviours among students as well as to change the remedial narrative about the Writing Centre.

The 2-hour Pizza Party Writing Workshop attracted 80-100 students that first September and each September thereafter until the pandemic transformed it into an online workshop called “The Lowdown.” The majority of our early September appointments that follow are booked by students saying that they met us at the Pizza Party/The Lowdown and are looking to continue the conversations they began there.

The in-person, on-campus Pizza Party Writing Workshop is designed to maximize engagement and relationship building between attendees and many of our writing instructors. It takes place in a large auditorium with round tables to facilitate small group activity sessions.

After a brief welcome and introduction, students join topic-oriented table activities each run by a writing instructor or two. The table topics typically include:

  • Decoding assignment instructions
  • Discovering structure
  • Developing thesis statements
  • Constructing paragraphs
  • Engaging with sources & avoiding plagiarism
  • Editing sentences

Currently, the workshop also includes a table with information and activities about working with “smart” or “intelligent” writing tools like Grammarly and OpenAI products. The number of table topics is limited by the length of the workshop, and we usually allot 10-minutes per table topic with another 3 minutes for students to rotate. A rotation of seven topics takes about 85 minutes.

For each topic table, the writing instructor spends 3-5 minutes providing some general information (noting that variations exist depending on discipline) as well as suggestions for how (or whether) to focus on the issue at various stages of the writing process. The goal is to introduce the topic and the dispel topic’s myths while inviting the students to dive deeper in 1-to-1 tutoring sessions. We use old-fashioned, tri-fold poster boards to supplement the verbal presentation. We used to provide a handout at each activity table as well, but we now offer a link to the supplementary website we built, The Lowdown on university-level academic writing, when the workshop was forced online due to the Pandemic.

via GIPHY

Then students are invited to engage in a short puzzle or gameful activity related to the topic (see examples on the supplementary website). These activities tend to prompt lots of collective teamwork and camaraderie. This is where we see bonds being formed between student attendees and with writing instructors facilitating the table activity.

Having completed a table activity, students win a ticket. They must earn a minimum of five tickets to get pizza. Eventually, the table activities are cleared away, and students continue their conversations over pizza. In this informal part of the event, writing instructors sit with students and have a chance to contribute to their conversations about transitioning to university life.

When the Pandemic hit, we were obviously unable to continue with the in-person or pizza elements of this workshop. We pivoted to an online workshop, renamed to “The Lowdown on university-level academic writing,” which ran in similar ways using Zoom break-out rooms. The online iteration of the workshop has excellent attendance, and is still the preferred modality of many students. We are looking into opportunities to re-launch the in-person pizza party.

For the online iteration of the workshop, we transformed our materials into the Lowdown website and changed some of the activities there to be do-able via Zoom. During the Pandemic, we began adding video resources to enhance the examination of these topics. This website is now capable of living as a stand-alone resource that can help first-year undergraduate students begin transitioning to university-level writing. Our plan, however, is to continue running The Lowdown and/or Pizza Party Writing Workshop to begin each year with a celebration of writing and talking writing in community. The primary goal is building personal connections between the writing centre and students.

If you’d like to chat about how to transform this workshop in your own context, get in touch!

With thanks to the many writing instructors at York’s Writing Centre who have contributed to the Pizza Party and Lowdown workshop as well as the resulting supplementary website.

The Pandemic, GenAI, & the Return to Handwritten, In-Person, Timed, and Invigilated Exams: Causes, Context, and the Perpetuation of Ableism (Part 1 of 2)

~ Brian Hotson

Vol. 4, No. 3 (Summer 2023)

Liv Marken, Contributing Editor, CWCR/RCCR

Part two, The Pandemic, GenAI, & the Return to Handwritten, In-Person, Timed Exams: A Critical Examination and Guidance for Writing Centre Support, is here. CWCR/RCCR Editor

When post-secondary institutions resumed in-person classes this year, many instructors and programs brought back handwritten, in-person, timed, and invigilated examinations (Hoyle, 2023; McLoughlin, 2023). This return to tradition was partly spurred by anxieties around the increase in student cheating during the remote phase of the pandemic (Bilen, Matros & Matros, 2021; Eaton, et al., 2023; Lancaster & Cortolan, 2023; Noorbehbahani, Mohammadi, & Aminazadeh 2022; Peters, 2023, Reed, 2023). Then, with OpenAI’s November 30, 2022 release of the artificial intelligence text generator, ChatGPT, anxieties about cheating escalated rapidly (Heidt, 2023). The AI language model’s ability to quickly generate natural-sounding text (in addition to its abilities in language tasks such as translation, summarization, and question answering) were exciting but also alarming (Cotton, Cotton, & Shipway, 2023; Susnjak, 2022), Since its release, ChatGPT’s steady improvement, as well as the proliferation of similar AI writing tools, have led to newly intensified anxieties around maintaining academic integrity (Cotton, Cotton, & Shipway, 2023; Susnjak, 2022).  AI detectors, which may seem like a silver bullet to prevent and catch plagiarism, have been shown to make false accusations (Drapkin, 2023) and show bias against non-native English speakers (Liang et al., 2023). OpenAI found that their own detection tool, AI Classifier, was just not effective at catching cheating, leading the company to “quietly” shut it down (Nelson, 2023): “As of July 20, 2023, the AI classifier is no longer available due to its low rate of accuracy” (OpenAI, 2023). With pandemic and generative AI cheating concerns, and no easy solutions, post-secondary institutions are in is a race against the clock to redesign assessment before the fall semester (Fowler, 2023; Heidt, 2023; Hubbard, 2023). Continue reading “The Pandemic, GenAI, & the Return to Handwritten, In-Person, Timed, and Invigilated Exams: Causes, Context, and the Perpetuation of Ableism (Part 1 of 2)” →

Writing centres and ChatGPT: And then all at once

~ Brian Hotson

Vol. 4, No. 1 (Spring 2023)
Brian Hotson, Editor, CWCR/RCCR

A couple months ago, I asked OpenAI‘s ChatGPT to write blog post on writing centres and academic integrity. This week, I asked the new version of ChatGPT to write this piece again. For the old version of GPT, I used this prompt:

Write a five-paragraph blog post about the state of writing centres in Canada, with citations and references. The first paragraph is an overview of Canadian writing centres for 2022. The second paragraph is an overview academic integrity issues in Canada in 2022. The third paragraph is an overview of how academic integrity affects Canadian writing centres. The four paragraph provides a preview of possible academic integrity issues in Canada in 2023. The fifth paragraph is a summation of the first four paragraphs.

Continue reading “Writing centres and ChatGPT: And then all at once” →

Response from Studiosity to Friends don’t let friends Studiosity (without reading the fine print)

~ Brian Hotson

CWCR/RCCR recently published a post, Friends don’t let friends Studiosity (without reading the fine print) (Vol. 4 No. 1 (Fall 2022)).

Professor Judyth Sachs, Academic Advisory Board Member & Chief Academic Officer at Studiosity, contacted the editor with a reply. Here is the content of that reply in the original.

Professor Judyth Sachs
Chief Academic Officer, Studiosity

Response to Holston and Bell (2022)

Students lie at the heart of university life and supporting their success is something we can all agree on. This support can take many forms. What form this takes is often contested, provides the basis for rigorous debate and is part and parcel of the academic zeitgeist. However, these debates need to be accurate, objective and evidence based. It is on these assumptions that, as Chief Academic Officer at Studiosity, I wish to set the record straight about Studiosity as a company, and our commitment to supporting students to be successful in their studies. However, before I do this, I want to make the following observations based on my experience as a senior academic leader and manager at two large research-intensive universities in Australia (University of Sydney as PVC Learning and Teaching and Provost at Macquarie University) where Student support came under my remit.

Continue reading “Response from Studiosity to Friends don’t let friends Studiosity (without reading the fine print)” →

Friends don’t let friends Studiosity (without reading the fine print)

A surveillance on the ledge of a building with a cloudy sky in the background.
~ Brian Hotson

Vol. 4 No. 1 (Fall 2022)

Brian Hotson, CWCR/RCCR Editor
Stevie Bell, CWCR/RCCR Associate Editor

Like many teachers on a late-August vacation, education companies can see September on the horizon. The difference is that these companies aren’t relaxing. They’re sending e-mails and booking video conferences with offers of freshly printed textbooks, handy workbooks, new online tools, and easy-to-use mobile apps that promise to make student life easier and save universities and colleges money.

The business of education is very large, with total global spending estimated at $4.7 trillion (USD) (UNESCO). By comparison, the total GDP of all African nations in 2021 was $2.7 trillion (USD) (StatisticsTimes, 2021). In 2018-2019, “public and private expenditure on [postsecondary] education” in Canada was $41.5 billion. Education companies would like a share of the money. In this context, a new-to-Canada online writing and tutoring tool, Studiosity, has appeared. Continue reading “Friends don’t let friends Studiosity (without reading the fine print)” →

Two years on: COVID Snapshot of writing centres in Canada – University of Alberta’s Centre for Writers

~ Brian Hotson

Vol 3, No 2 (Spring 2022)

This is the second of three posts from our CWCR/RCCR’s 2022 COVID snapshot of writing centres in Canada. The first post was a snapshot from Hailie Tattrie from the writing centre at MSVU in Halifax. This snapshot come further west–Centre for Writers at the University of Alberta.

Here are the snapshots from 2020 and 2021.

Centre for Writers
Yan (Belinda) Wang, Acting Director
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB

This coming March will mark the two-year transition into remote services since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The past year saw the Centre for Writers (C4W) thrive in some areas but also experience unprecedented difficulties and challenges.

What Went Well and Relatively Well
Our clients are happy with online tutoring and other services we provide. We echo some other writing centres’ pleasant surprise in students’ willingness and appreciation for us adopting remote services. In the past academic year, when clients were asked if they were happy with the new online tutoring service, 99% of them said they were very happy or somewhat happy. For the first time ever, C4W services were offered later in the day (sometimes up to 10:00 pm) to accommodate clients in different time zones. The WCOnline scheduling system, especially its online consultation feature, continued to function effectively most of the time. Zoom was also used as an alternative when WCOnline malfunctioned.

Prior to the pandemic, asynchronous tutoring (i.e., emailed written feedback) was only offered to Faculty of Extension, U of A’s  school of distance learning, students. When it became clear that extending the service in a pandemic setting would be beneficial, we started to offer the service to students of all faculties. Soon after the change was implemented, we experienced a surge in asynchronous tutoring requests. Even though we had three dedicated asynchronous tutors providing written feedback, many synchronous tutors had to assist with asynchronous requests when the number of submissions became overwhelming.

Our guided writing groups (for international graduate students) and group writing support (for writing-intensive undergraduate courses) thrived in the first half of 2021. We offered eight writing groups between January and April 2021, a new record for the C4W. We also supported five writing-intensive undergraduate courses in the same period, another very successful record.

The pandemic also impacted the delivery of our tutor training course, Writing Studies 301/603. Dr. Lucie Moussu, the former Director of the C4W, successfully taught the course online for the first time in Fall 2020. A new approach was developed to facilitate the online practicum portion of the course: student-tutors were given the opportunity to develop their tutoring skills and reflect upon their tutoring practice through online observations, online co-tutoring, online supervised tutoring, and solo tutoring at their own pace throughout the term. However, student-tutors’ individual challenges and efforts necessitated adjustments to this plan, with some never reaching the third or fourth stage of tutoring. A detailed spreadsheet was used to track student-tutors’ hours at each stage, as well as their progress. Justin, our Program Coordinator, did an amazing job scheduling and keeping track of everything and everyone amidst the scheduling madness. In the end, out of 18 students, six undergraduate students and eight graduate students from the course were hired in 2021 to fuel our tutor team.

Difficulties and Challenges
The continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic brought to light a few ongoing challenges, especially feelings of isolation and mental health concerns. Additional instabilities emerged in the latter half of 2021, bringing with them significant challenges: our previous director left, and we struggled a little in the aftermath of her departure.

Issues with technology
Issues with technology arose for both tutors and clients. Some of these issues included microphone and camera troubles, clients not showing up to online appointments, Internet instability, and a recurring problem with WCOnline malfunctioning and terminating online consultations prematurely. Some of these problems were resolved quickly; for example, we used Zoom to connect tutors with clients during a WCOnline outage. Each tutor was given a private Zoom link (through the U of A) that they shared with clients at the start of each appointment in case issues arose with WCOnline. Some clients preferred Zoom and asked tutors to switch to Zoom at the beginning of their appointments.

Feelings of isolation and mental health concerns
The online environment left many feeling isolated, so it was important for tutors to keep in touch with one another. Justin set up a daily check-in window on WCOnline, where the tutors could connect and socialize. We also gave the tutors our personal cell phone numbers so that they could contact us when needed. Tutors needed to be reachable at all times during their shifts in case clients needed a drop-in session or we had other writing-centre related duties for them. Also, tutors checked in with Justin at the start of each shift between 10 am and 4:30 pm in the WCOnline check-in window, and with the director, by text, from 4:30 pm until 10 pm. More frequent staff meetings were also scheduled so that we could connect with the tutors on a weekly basis.

Isolation due to the pandemic also caused some mental health concerns. While C4W staff had the methods of coping mentioned above, many clients felt very isolated. Tutors often found themselves listening to problems and concerns that their clients needed to talk about. While tutors are not expected or encouraged to act as therapists, they graciously listened to clients when they needed a place to vent their frustrations. Tutors themselves were in turn encouraged to reach out to us with any problems they needed to talk about.

The aftermath of Dr. Lucie Moussu leaving the C4W
Dr. Lucie Moussu leaving the C4W in June 2021 was a huge loss. Her departure and the Dean of Students’ inaction in finding a permanent replacement threw the rest of us into a panic, and we struggled to cope in her absence. The C4W was without a director for two months, after which I asked the Dean of Students to hire me as Acting Director. (I had already been Acting Director during Dr. Moussu’s last sabbatical leave.)

Dr. Moussu’s departure meant that she could no longer teach the tutor training course, which had been essential in preparing well-trained tutors. For the first time in the C4W history, this course was taught by someone other than the C4W director in Fall 2021; it was instead taught by a full lecturer in the Department of English and Film Studies (EFS). The problem with this arrangement was that the lecturer did not train students specifically for the C4W  but rather for other writing tutor positions in EFS. In the end, only two undergraduate students from this class applied for a C4W tutor position. It was very disappointing, as it did not give the C4W any room to select the tutors with the most potential. Also, it defeated the purpose of the tutor training course, which was initially specifically designed to fit the C4W’s purposes.

My limited experience with writing centre work, and even more limited energy as I am trying to complete my own PhD dissertation, means that a number of goals set for the 2021-2022 academic year cannot be achieved. Vigorous promotion of our services, community building, collaboration with various faculties, research-related activities, and professional development opportunities for tutors were greatly reduced, as a result.

Looking Forward
The future of the C4W remains uncertain, but we are hopeful that peer writing support will continue to thrive, at least in some areas. Changes are underway and conversations about the future of our tutoring services are ongoing.

Streamlining services and reinventing workshops
In an effort to streamline our services, limit the unmanageable number of email exchanges, and encourage clients to book synchronous online tutoring appointments, we decided to retire the email system and implement the eTutoring function already available on WCOnline. Our Quick Guide for Online Tutoring was updated to reflect this new change. Justin created a separate eTutoring schedule for Winter 2022 on WCOnline, opening a few eTutoring appointments each day. Three dedicated eTutors are responsible for checking their appointment windows and attaching written feedback to the appointments within three business days.

As our clients and tutors have grown accustomed to the new norm of online learning, interest in and demand for workshops kept growing. As a result, we decided to bring back the writing workshops, which were cancelled at the beginning of the pandemic. Our graduate tutors responded positively to the idea of resuming the workshops in an online setting, and many created new workshop topics and materials relevant to clients’ current concerns. Most of the workshops have been well-attended and all of them well-received.

Resuming in-person services and the future of the tutor training course
We have been having ongoing conversations with the Dean of Students about resuming in-person services once COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. We might return to campus in the coming Fall 2022 semester, and we would like to explore a hybrid model to accommodate clients’ different needs. Discussions about alternative formats of the tutor training course are also underway, as entrusting the Department of EFS to teach the course proved to be less than ideal.

Two years on: COVID Snapshot of writing centres in Canada – Mount Saint Vincent University Writing Centre

~ Brian Hotson

Vol 3, No 1 (Spring 2022)

In both March 2020 and 2021, CWCR/RCCR published snapshots of writing centres in Canada and their responses to the disruption of COVID 19. Now, two years on, while the thesaurus is busy writing new adjectives to describe our new realities, CWCR/RCCR is providing a snapshot from centres around Canada for 2022. We will post three snapshots—here is the first from MSVU in Halifax.

Mount Saint Vincent University Writing Centre
Hailie Tattrie, PhD Student
Mount Saint Vincent University
Halifax, NS

Making the best of COVID19: Learning together

“I really feel like this meeting has helped me!”, words from one of my regular students, Student M, who visits me at the Mount Saint Vincent University Writing Centre. Some days we edit her work together, other days we converse for the entire hour; sharing ideas, asking one another questions as we sip coffee at our desks, each of us in a different country. Despite the distance and the low hum of our laptops we make online tutoring work.

An image of Paulo Freire sitting in an office or library.
Paulo Freire

Revolutionary educator, Paulo Freire, is known for his work on critical pedagogy, as well as his exploration of the banking-model of education and the problem-posing model of education. The form of education that many in North America grew up with is known as the banking-model of education. This model is a subject-object relationship. As a tutor under the banking-model of education, I would simply sit at my desk and tell the student to remain silent as I edit their paper and make comments; there would be very little conversing. Under this model, the teacher is the subject, the bringer of knowledge, and the students are the object, empty and knowing nothing (Freire, 1970). Under the banking-model of education, students are seen as empty vessels, waiting to be filled with what is deemed the “correct” knowledge. In the banking-model, there’s no room for dialogue, critical thinking, or creativity. The banking model can be seen as Eurocentric in nature (Beattie, 2019; Kanu, 2006). However, Freire dreamed of more than the banking-model; he suggested an alternative, the problem-posing model of education. Continue reading “Two years on: COVID Snapshot of writing centres in Canada – Mount Saint Vincent University Writing Centre” →

Trying to capture the full story: Making a post-tutoring session survey

~ Canadian Writing Centres Association

Volume 2, No. 1 Summer 2021
by Emma Sylvester

Emma Sylvester is Coordinator, Writing Centre and Academic Communications, Saint Mary’s University.

Introduction

As Writing Centre (WC) practitioners, how do we know that students are actually benefitting from our work? Plenty of research has shown that WC use improves students’ grades (e.g., Driscoll, 2015; Thompson, 2006; Trosset et al., 2019, Dansereau, et al., 2020), but how do I know that translates to my own unique institution or to the session I had with a tutee this morning? As a tutor, the immediate feedback of seeing a student’s “lightbulb moment” or hearing their expressions of gratitude gives me some indication that I’m doing something right. Unfortunately, these experiences aren’t reliable or comprehensive indicators of the benefits of the WC, and they don’t tell me about the student’s full emotional experience in session or their long-term learning. Further, in the post-covid era, ripe with asynchronous sessions and cameras left off, these moments are potentially fewer and farther between.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Zt4bRIYDrOHFxtgO8iRzuJAZ4DyUp5YLbsA4oAWTrY0/edit

Post-session surveys are widely used across WCs not only to learn about how students value writing tutorials, but also to inform program development, assess and refine tutor practice, collect data for study and publication, and even to justify the existence of the centres themselves (Bromley et al., 2013). The need to collect, analyse, and apply data related to students’ experience in session is obvious and inherent in the ongoing development of WC practice, but taking a rigorous approach to this process is often forgotten amidst other seemingly more important (and let’s just say it, more interesting) work.

Continue reading “Trying to capture the full story: Making a post-tutoring session survey” →

Pandemic Graduate Student Writing and Transition Support: Reflections and Predictions (Part 2)

~ Canadian Writing Centres Association

Vol. 2, No. 6 (Spring 2021)
Liv Marken, Contributing Editor, CWCR/RCCR

Link to Part I

PART II: Accessibility and Transition

Last week, we heard from Jill McMillan, a Learning Specialist at University of Saskatchewan, and Nadine Fladd, a Writing and Multimodal Communication Specialist at the University of Waterloo. They talked about their pandemic year. Here, in part two, they share their thoughts on graduate student transition, and accessibility, particularly in regard to international students. Continue reading “Pandemic Graduate Student Writing and Transition Support: Reflections and Predictions (Part 2)” →

Asynchronous Affordances: WriteAway’s Pandemic Experience

~ Canadian Writing Centres Association

Vol. 2, No. 5 (Fall 2020)
by Megan Robertson

Megan is a BC ELN (British Columbia Electronic Library Network) Coordinator providing support for tutors and coordinators throughout BC and Alberta.

While the rush to emergency remote teaching occurred out of necessity due to the COVID-19 disruption, writing supports already operating only online have an opportunity to reflect on their existing approaches. WriteAway, British Columbia and Alberta’s online asynchronous writing support consortium of post-secondary students, was first piloted in 2012. Through a series of cautious expansions over several years, the service enters this new reality of online tutoring firmly in its operating stage with eighteen participating institutions. Continue reading “Asynchronous Affordances: WriteAway’s Pandemic Experience” →

Video Chat || Programming, technology, and resource development during the COVID-19 disruption

~ Canadian Writing Centres Association

A Writing Centre Directors’ & Managers’ Roundtable

Clare Bermingham, University of Waterloo, Guest editor
Stephanie Bell, York University, Co-editor
Brian Hotson, Saint Mary’s University, Co-editor

With all the changes to writing centres due to the COVID-19 disruption, many directors and managers are asking questions, wanting to know, “What is everybody doing to manage this change?” To help with this, we organized the blog’s first Video Chat (hopefully the first of many). These Video Chats are moderated text-based and video-based discussions. The blog editors invite proposals for Video Chat topics and guest editors to moderate them.

Below are the elements from the Video Chat, including:

  • Topics, discussion questions, and agenda
  • Recording of the video-based discussion
  • Transcript of the text-based discussion
  • A google spreadsheet of topics, questions, and ideas from the Video Chat

We hope that you find this useful for your writing centre. Continue reading “Video Chat || Programming, technology, and resource development during the COVID-19 disruption” →

Canadian writing centres respond to COVID-19 – March 17, 2020

~ Brian Hotson

CWCR/RCCR editorial team
Liv Marken, Stephanie Bell, & Brian Hotson
Vol. 1, No. 6 (Winter 2020)

As Heraclitus continually reminds us, everything changes, constantly, but the tempo and severity of change from COVID-19 has overwhelmed and challenged us all in our writing centres. We wondered how other institutions around the country are coping with the fallout from COVID-19.

We asked twenty writing centres from coast to coast to coast to provide a short description of their centre’s response to COVID-19. We will publish these responses in parts by the day they were received, from March 17th to March 19th.

Below is a snapshot of our colleagues’ writing centres from March 17, 2020. Continue reading “Canadian writing centres respond to COVID-19 – March 17, 2020” →