1. Introduction
[1] As distance-based education grows globally, so does the need for equitable student support addressing the unique needs of online learners. Roughly one-third of undergraduate and graduate students are taking courses or earning degrees online (Online Learning Consortium, 2017). These online students, many of whom are adult learners and are motivated by such issues as access, learning preferences, convenience, work/life demands, and financial considerations (Bertucci Hamper, 2018) have arguably become the new traditional college student population (Hewett, 2015a, 2015b). For these students, online support services can equalize their opportunities for success in higher education, helping a larger, more diverse student population earn college degrees. Students not only have a right to support services that match their learning environment (i.e., both onsite and online) and modality (i.e., asynchronous and synchronous), but they also have need for assistance with their writing when the bulk of the instruction is offered through text; online writing tutors can provide invaluable guidance in helping students decipher instructional texts and teacher feedback, enabling the students to put that feedback into practice in revised drafts (Hewett, 2015b).
[2] Online writing tutoring, which has also been referred to as online writing lab (OWL) tutoring, can be a fundamental component of this institutional support, allowing both onsite and online writing centers to increase access and equity for all students seeking writing help online (Bertucci Hamper, 2018). Indeed, the growth in the number of students taking courses online combined with the increased literacy load of online learners (Hewett, 2015b) highlights the importance of moving writing center support online. OWI Principle 13 from “A Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction (OWI)” (CCCC Committee, 2013) indicated that “OWI students should be provided support components through online/digital media as a primary resource; they should have access to onsite support components as a secondary set of resources.” OWI Principle 14 stated that “Online writing lab administrators and tutors should undergo selection, training, and ongoing professional development activities that match the environment in which they will work.” Twenty-four example effective practices for developing, administering, and working within OWLs were articulated between these two principles. Nonetheless, there remains a relative absence of additional principles, commonly held practices, and—particularly—training manuals that guide online writing center tutoring and the unique institutional contexts that dictate what this work looks like. Writing center educators have only begun to understand the value of online writing tutoring despite its more than 25-year history. That online writing centers have begun to flourish points to a new understanding that online instruction and tutoring are not deficit models, substandard to onsite instruction and tutoring; rather, they are models of differentiated learning that require their own environment- and modality-specific principles and effective practices. Yet, a sizeable gap exists in the field’s understanding of how online writing centers are functioning in 2019. In our own work developing, maintaining, and improving online writing centers within various unique institutional contexts, we have felt this gap profoundly. When working to answer questions concerning access, inclusion, identity, training, technology, and institutional context within an online writing center, we realized that other writing center directors, administrators, and staff likely have experienced a similar lack of direction when building or improving resources to tutor students online. To determine how pervasive these questions have become across writing center work and to gauge the current state of online writing centers, we developed a special issue of ROLE and solicited papers that outlined and critiqued current research, theory, and practice in online writing tutoring. The response to our call for papers was an overwhelming twenty-five proposals, and we received enough initial submissions to fill multiple special issues on this topic. This response not only validated our suspicion that other writing center educators have been engaged in similar struggles to create and improve sustainable online writing tutoring options, but also emphasized the need for continued scholarship in the area of online writing centers. To this end, we hope that the resulting special issue lays a foundation for online writing center scholarship. Moving forward, we call on readers to raise additional issues and produce more stories, practical applications, research, critique, and independent studies to build a comprehensive illustration of how online writing center work has evolved—and continues to evolve—to meet online learners’ needs.
[3] Beyond proposals, we also received numerous emails from writing center educators who were excited to see online writing center scholarship being sought for this ROLE issue. While online writing center scholarship remains less often published than mainstream writing center scholarship, we are heartened to see that many writing center scholars are actively engaging in online writing center research and practice, attempting to engage research-centered decisions about how to work with students online. Simultaneous to the development of this ROLE special issue, a large turnout to the online writing center SIG during IWCA’s 2018 conference in Atlanta, GA also demonstrated that many writing center administrators and tutors are interested in online writing tutoring, seeking help in making informed decisions in their own online writing centers. Now is the time, we believe, to be actively involved in creating a community of online writing center scholars.
[4] We not only wish for this ROLE special issue to begin to fill the gap in online writing center scholarship that we have experienced as writing center professionals, but also hope that it will act as a catalyst to continuing online writing center and online writing tutoring research and scholarship. Michael Greer, the editor of ROLE, and the journal are interested in publishing such scholarship for future issues. Indeed, it published just such a piece in its inaugural issue 1.1 “Teaching Tutors NOT to Tutor Themselves: Personality in Online Writing Sessions” (Hallman Martini & Hewett, 2018). We encourage readers who were unable to submit to this special issue to submit online writing center scholarship to the journal, and we hope to see other journals publish and share such research and scholarship, leading to a vigorous and energetic exchange of ideas.
[5] For this special issue, Bridging the Gap: Online Writing Centers and Online Writing Tutoring, the articles are organized by three thematic categories: (1) development of online writing centers; (2) analyses of asynchronous feedback techniques; and (3) studies of tutor training in online writing centers. Throughout these sections, the authors go beyond the familiar debate regarding whether to use synchronous or asynchronous tutoring modalities Instead, they push scholarship forward with such questions as: How can educators build an online writing center with the technology available at the institution? What policies and modalities are best for individual institutions’ online writing centers? What kind of feedback can be effective in asynchronous tutoring? How can administrators effectively train and motivate online writing center tutors?
[6] All the authors in Section 1: Development of Online Writing Centers engage with challenges in providing online tutoring to the students at their institutions. Tom Earles (“How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Asynchronous Online Tutoring”) and Chet Breaux and Lauren Reynolds (“Digital Growing Pains: Establishing Services for Online Graduate Programs”) detailed how they responded to already-created online or blended programs at their institutions, building online writing centers for the students in those programs. Earles provided readers with a useful getting-started guide for building an online writing center, including considering an appropriate platform, building staff training, determining scheduling, and deciding on a delivery approach. Breaux and Reynolds focused specifically on how to tutor graduate students online, advocating for a shift away from a generalist, non-directive model of tutoring, which includes (a) altering online consulting practices for graduate students that address “lower-order” concerns and account for the specific audiences to which each student is writing and (b) intentionally creating staffing and training practices that better address the specific writing needs of graduate students.
[7] M. R. Bourgeois and G. Giaimo (“Instituting and Assessing Online Writing Groups: When Flexibility and Change Supports Engagement and Writing Success”) also analyzed their online writing center tutoring; additionally, they explained their online writing center’s process of piloting multiple forms of online tutoring. The authors detailed their online writing center’s two-step asynchronous consultations, and then they explained a shift to piloting one-step drop-off consultations and an online writing group. They found that the less structured tutoring had increased student engagement (specifically encouraging participants’ goal setting and progress sharing long-term) over the other types of tutoring they offered.
[8] Finally, Chessie Alberti (“DIY OWL: How to Make Google Suite Work for Online Writing Tutorials”) provided a technology review of her online writing center’s use of Google Suite, explaining the process for choosing Google Suite and considerations in that process, along with how her online writing center uses Google Suite as a platform to host their online tutoring.
[9] In Section 2: Analyses of Asynchronous Feedback Techniques, the authors characterized and discussed asynchronous feedback practices. Rather than looking at directive and non-directive language, Rebecca Hallman Martini (“It’s Not What You Say, It’s How You Form It: Investigating Commenting Styles in Asynchronous Online Writing Center Consultations”) studied how the location and format of asynchronous feedback can impact the type of feedback tutors give students. She analyzed two types of asynchronous tutoring sessions: one in which the tutor provided feedback through in-text comments and one in which the tutor just provided end commentary on the writing. Hallman Martini demonstrated that the format tutors use may impact the type of feedback they give students, with in-text comments resulting in more frequent comments that (a) focused on the sentence-level and (b) included more detailed directions, questions, observations, and rule-based feedback for the student.
[10] Lisa Bell (“Examining Tutoring Strategies in Asynchronous Screencast Tutorials”) coded and analyzed transcripts of online writing center asynchronous screencast tutorials, exploring how and to what extent tutors may use the tutoring strategies of instruction, scaffolding, and motivation in an online environment. She concluded that tutors adapt in-person tutoring strategies for an online environment in their screencast tutorials.
[11] In Section 3: Studies of Tutor Training in Online Writing Centers, Paul Beaufait, Suwako Uehara, Dawn Lucovich, and Brian Gallagher (“What Makes Tutors Tick? Exploring Motives and Experiences in the JALT Writers' Peer Support Group (PSG)”) considered tutor motivations for working in an online writing center. The researchers surveyed members of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT) Peer Support Group to determine their motivations for joining the group, types of feedback they deemed helpful to writers, and their perspectives on both the advantages and challenges in working online asynchronously. Based on the survey results, Beaufait et al. argued that online writing center administrators should provide more formal tutor training, tutor community building efforts, and regular tutor feedback from clients, peer readers, and the program coordinator to online tutors.
[12] Anna Grigoryan (“Applying the Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge [TPACK] Framework to Enhance Tutor Training and Writing Instruction in Online Writing Centers”) connected the Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework to the tutor training she conducts in her writing center, arguing that the TPACK framework can help train tutors to develop pedagogically-sound asynchronous online feedback. She argued that with judicious use of videos and other technology, tutors can provide students helpful and in-depth asynchronous online feedback.
[13] Finally, but certainly not least, Kelvin Keown (“Big Cupboard: Developing a Tutor’s Manual of Model Asynchronous Feedback for Multilingual Writers”) focused his article on the needs of multilingual students for online tutor training, drawing from linguistics to develop a manual that guides tutors in providing asynchronous feedback to multilingual writers. Other writing centers not only can use Keown’s manual as a guide but also can use the manual’s design process as a helpful resource in thinking about their own training for tutoring multilingual students.
