Week 9

I had my first official ride along for an email consultation on Monday. I had sat in on a portion of one of Heath's email consultations during my first week in the center, but that was pretty early on and I was learning so many things at the time that I didn't absorb everything. Having the official ride along experience was really helpful and calmed some of the fears I had about responding to writers online. I worked with Melissa Hughes; she was great at explaining her process for email consultations and allowing me to jump in and do some of the work.

Going into the email consultation, it seemed to me like the email consultations are something entirely different from the face-to-face consultations. It almost seemed strange that the two services would be provided by a single writing center. One works with writers, the other works with texts. Many of my concerns were similar to the ones in the Lisa Bell article we read this week, "Preserving the Rhetorical Nature of Tutoring When Going Online." The steps and strategies that are important in face-to-face consulting are impossible in an email consultation. You can't interact with the writer, get to know something about them, welcome them into the space, get feedback, have them explain what they mean... My question was, how do we practice and uphold the things we value in the Writing Center when we're working with writers online? 

The truth is, I still don't know the answer to that question. Even after my ride along, sample email consultation, and all the readings for the week, I still don't see email consultations matching up ideologically with the rest of writing center work. That's not to say that I don't think it's a valuable service for students. On the contrary, I can already see the many benefits of email consultations. Maybe I just need to come to grips with the fact that the service we provide to writers online is different, by necessity, than the service we provide in person. They can't be the same because the writer is removed in time and space from the consultation. 

All the work I did in 303 and in the center this week taught me some important tips for making email consultations reflect (as much as possible) what we're doing in the Center. First, it's important to still greet the writer and make them feel as comfortable as possible. It's also important to still give the writer options instead of answers and to point to specific places in the text when discussing strengths and weaknesses. All of these things just take a little more effort in email consultations. These are just some preliminary thoughts; I expect my ideas about email consultations to continue to evolve as I work with them more throughout the semester. 

In closing, I have an idea of the topic I would like to work with in my WCJ article. As an English Teaching major, I think it would be really interesting to explore the relationship between the composition classroom and the writing center or look at ways composition courses could adapt their pedagogy to reflect what the writing center does (and if that would even be effective). Some articles I'm considering analyzing are: "Training Teachers for the Writing Lab: a Multidimensional Perspective," "Understanding 'Spirit' in the Writing Center," and "Inter-activism: Strengthening the Writing Center Conference." I'd appreciate any direction on this or even suggestions for other articles on the subject. Thanks!