Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 20, No. 2 (2023)

What Our Tutors Know: The Advantages of Small Campus Tutoring Centers

Ana Wetzl
Kent State University at Trumbull
awetzl@kent.edu

Pam Lieske
Kent State University at Trumbull
plieske@kent.edu

Mahli Mechenbier
Kent State University at Geauga
mmechenb@kent.edu

Abstract

Tutoring centers from small, open-admission campuses provide a much-needed service to students, but they also have to compete with other tutoring options such as eTutoring and private tutoring companies. As university budgets shrink and administration begins to look at cutting costs, outsourcing tutoring may sound like a good idea. Yet, there are certain aspects of tutoring that cannot be easily created when tutoring is cut off from the campus environment, such as the knowledge that tutors accumulate from being part of the campus—attending courses, tutoring, and just being part of the same communities of practice as their tutees. The article draws from the theoretical framework about communities of practice developed by Etienne Wenger and looks into how tutors build this knowledge. Additionally, the article explores ways in which this knowledge can be incorporated more in initial and ongoing tutor training. Qualitative and quantitative data collected from our regional campus current and former tutors show that belonging to some of the same communities as the tutees, both on and off campus, allows our tutors to provide an individualized campus-centered tutoring experience that relies on tutors’ previous knowledge of what professors look for. This knowledge can be obtained in organic ways, such as from having had courses with the professor, working with multiple students asking for help with the same assignment, or collaborating with other tutors who may be familiar with the professor. This knowledge cannot be duplicated by other tutoring services that are not affiliated with a specific campus. 

Introduction

Open admission universities, such as the regional campuses for the midwestern public university where we teach first-year writing courses, rely on various support services to help students succeed academically. Tutoring represents one such support service, and each of our university’s seven small regional campuses has a learning center providing tutoring for a variety of subjects, including writing. Other online tutoring companies, such as eTutoring¹, Khan, Etutoring World, and Chegge market their services to students and contract with universities to offer other tutoring options. At first glance, outsourced tutoring may seem advantageous as running a campus tutoring center can be expensive. However, outsourced tutoring services are largely unregulated and do not provide the same level of individualized attention that on-campus learning centers offer. Regional campus tutoring centers also have an inherent advantage that is impossible to duplicate by external companies: tutors’ knowledge of the student population and their familiarity with campus faculty. The training of on-campus tutors also is more intimate and individualized than outsourced options. It includes formal training and supervision provided by faculty and ongoing informal training or learning through conversations between and among tutors, tutees, faculty members, and other members of the educational community. These learning opportunities provide tutors a solid understanding of the context in which students write which helps to improve students’ writing and their experience in the tutoring center. This led us to investigate how belonging to a small regional campus and the overlapping communities around it may shape the knowledge that tutors bring to the tutoring session, and how they go about obtaining it.

Most learning does not happen in isolation. As the social learning theorist Etienne Wenger explains in Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, individuals rarely arrive at new knowledge or insights in formal settings where they are isolated from others. More often they learn in informal, communal, and spontaneous ways by conversing with others, and the result of all this interaction is a “community or communities of practice.” As Wenger states, “participation in social communities shapes our experience, and it also shapes those communities; the transformative potential goes both ways. Indeed, our ability (or inability) to shape the practice of our communities is an important aspect of our experience of participation” (56-57). Since Wenger’s seminal work first appeared in print, he and others have critiqued, developed, and applied the concept of “communities of practice” idea to different settings, and Wenger has broadened the idea and recognized it is more complex or nuanced than first conceived. In a 2014 interview, he states: “Instead of focusing centrally on a community of practice and membership in that community of practice, the focus [now] is more on multiple communities and systems of practice, landscapes of practice, and identity as formed across practices and not just within practices” (qtd. in Omdivar and Kislov 269).  In other words, learning does not just move into the community on a one-way street, or even return to the individual from a community in a holistic way. Making meaning, or learning, is more complicated than that and also involves the formation, in whole or in part, of one’s identity in a community.

Wenger’s ideas are important to our current study as they help us understand the unique role that regional campus student tutors play in the education of tutees and the formation of their identity as tutors. These tutors do not just interact with tutees; they often also interact with their fellow tutors, students in their classes, faculty supervisors and other faculty, and at times even administrators, librarians, and student services staff. They also are members of both the university’s and the global community of practice of writing tutors. Wanting to understand their communities of practice more fully, as well as the knowledge they wish they had is why, in the fall of 2020, we surveyed current and former tutors from our university’s seven regional campuses. We wanted to better understand how tutors know what they know and the role that familiarity with the campus and its instructors play in tutor performance. We also wanted a better understanding of the role that sharing the same spaces plays in the tutor-tutee interaction. Through our research, we found that this space-sharing was vital to their job; there are certain aspects of tutoring that cannot be easily created when tutoring is cut off from the campus environment. The results of our research may help tutoring programs design more targeted tutor training opportunities centered on developing and preserving knowledge about the campus and its instructors. It may also help regional campuses such as ours fight to preserve tutoring centers that may become threatened by budget cuts or mandatory outsourcing of its services.

Why Tutoring is Needed on Open-Admissions Campuses

Tutoring services are sorely needed on open admission regional campuses like ours as campuses struggle to improve retention and students struggle to pass courses. Many of our students come underprepared and are placed in developmental writing and reading classes. From fall of 2016 through fall of 2020, 29.1% of new freshmen students who enrolled in regional campuses were placed in ENG 01001, the first semester developmental writing course, and of those students, 48% either dropped the course or earned a grade of D or lower (Kent State University, Institutional Research, “Kent Campus Retention” and “Retention Rates for the RC System”). Additionally, retention rates are much lower on the regional campuses than they are on the central campus. In 2019, our university’s retention rate for first-time, full-time freshmen was 81.6% while the regional campuses’ retention rate for first-time full time and part-time students was 57.5% (Kent State University, Institutional Research, “Kent Campus Retention” and “Retention Rates for the RC System”).

One reason regional campus students struggle with academic writing is because of the poor condition of secondary education around many regional campuses. The campus where two of the authors teach draws students from the neighboring city school district where high schools are routinely assigned failing grades by the state when it comes to academic preparedness (Ohio Department of Education). A researcher from another regional campus for our university claims that “81% of . . . [its] students require remediation of some kind” (Pfrenger et al. 22). The open-admission designation of the seven regional campuses, which vary in size and student preparation, gives underprepared students a chance at higher education, but without the assistance of tutoring services, they may be less likely to acquire the academic skills they need to succeed.

Having access to an on-campus tutoring center is also an issue of social justice; in their article “A Blueprint for Scaling Tutoring and Mentoring Across Public Schools”, Matthew Kraft and Grace Falken point out that while tutoring has seen a mind-blowing expansion in the last thirty years, it is mostly the wealthier communities who can afford it. Edward Kim et al.’s research shows that “[a]s of 2016, 44 percent of tutoring centers were in areas representing the top fifth of the income distribution, and 55 percent of tutoring centers newly opened between 2000 and 2016 opened in such areas” (2), serving students who are already academically strong, but looking to gain an edge over their peers (27). Ironically, the students who need tutoring most have the least access, which is why Kraft and Falken call for policy makers to “equalize access to individualized instruction and academic mentoring” (1). They propose that we “view tutoring and mentorship as core parts of students’ schooling” (Kraft and Falken 14) and rely on local resources “to shape programs to their local contexts” (Kraft and Falken 14) as we develop a nationwide system that provides equal access to all students.

Benefits of Tutoring and the Importance of Tutor-Tutee Rapport

We know that tutoring helps with retention in our population. Wendy Pfrenger et al.’s 2017 study examined the short- and long-term effects of required Learning Center visits on retention at one of our regional campus. Their research suggests that working with writing tutors may help developmental writing students pass their courses. As reported,

students who were required to visit the writing center and did so were significantly more likely to  pass the course than students who were required but did not visit the writing center (χ2 [194] = 10.54, p = .001). Only 48% of students who did not use the writing center when required passed the course while 71% of students who used the writing center when required received passing grades. (25)

Moreover, statistical analysis for this study revealed that “students were more likely to pass their second-semester writing course (69.4% versus 79.6%) and less likely to withdraw (14% versus 8.5%)” (Pfrenger et al. 24) when they visited the campus writing center. These researchers also followed the participants over the period of three semesters and observed that persistence also improved as a result of working with a writing tutor. As Pfrenger et al. explains, “[s]tudents who were required to use the writing center and did so were not only more likely to pass the course [they were taking], but less likely to withdraw or stop attending the course (χ2 [194] = 13.78, p = .008)” (25). While other factors may have contributed to the success of these developmental writing students who sought tutoring help, this study provides a powerful argument in favor of tutoring considering that the researchers’ assertions were based on statistically relevant data collected from a large population of 1301 participants over the span of three years. While Pfrenger el al.’s research focuses on only one of our regional campuses, it nonetheless provides insight into how central these on-campus writing centers are to students’ success.

Pfrenger et al.’s results align with a study by Jacyln Wells on developmental writers’ perceptions of writing centers. Wells discovered that close to 70% of the 140 developmental writers surveyed responded “yes” to the question of whether developmental writers should be required to visit the writing center (93). Why participants felt this way can be explained, in part, by the second half of the study which consisted of interviews with 15 of the 140 participants.  One salient finding from the interviews was that while “[i]nterview participants were never directly asked about tutors . . .  all 15 commented at least generally on writing center staff. The most interesting comments . . . had to do with finding a tutor who fit the student’s preferences, needs, or even personality” (Wells 103). Students are also more willing to accept tutoring if instructors are excited about tutoring and emphasize its benefits, including likely improvement of grades (Wells 106-7). The students participating in Pfrenger et al.’s article described “the writing center as a place for ‘guidance,’ especially noting how it either supplemented course lessons or provided benefits the students found lacking in the classroom.” This suggests that if students do not feel comfortable with their instructor, they benefit from freely discussing with a tutor their concerns and questions they may have about a piece of writing.

The importance of tutor-tutee rapport has long been emphasized in writing studies; in The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors, Melissa Ianetta and Lauren Fitzgerald state that “rather than one person talking or asking questions while the other person quietly listens or answers, tutors and writers often engage in a dynamic back-and-forth in which both of them talk, listen, ask, and answer” (54). Cynthia Lee’s empirical study on developing rapport in writing consultations builds on this work, but it also recognizes that “directive tutoring acts and tutor dominance” can occur in tutoring sessions (431). Terese Thonus also sees a disconnect between advice in tutorial manuals that see tutors as “supportive peers,” and what occurs in reality where tutors also evaluate and teach students in such a way that their “roles . . . [are] negotiated anew in each tutorial” (“Triangulation” 60). Having a regional campus tutor may help with the lack of connection between tutor and tutee because the two share the same communities of practice in and out of school and can therefore connect in more meaningful ways than when the tutor is not part of the tutee’s community.

Tutoring can build confidence in writers who struggle as research indicates that “[t]utorials in which both tutor and student demonstrated high and roughly equal rates of interactional features were rated as among the most successful” (Thonus, “Tutor” 127). In other words, students benefit from tutoring sessions when rapport is present and both parties converse freely and easily. Belonging to overlapping communities of practices can help create this rapport between students and tutors. This mutually beneficial interpersonal interaction and synergy may not be present when tutoring is outsourced because the tutor is not part of the same communities of practice as the tutee.  Because tutoring is relational and interactive, being able to relate to the tutee helps tutors better communicate necessary insights and information to their tutee. As Isabelle Thompson explains, “[d]eveloping comfort and trust—making the personal connection—that to some extent stimulates students’ readiness to learn demands that conferences be highly interactive” (446). 

methodology

To get a better understanding of the types of knowledge that regional campus tutors bring to the tutoring session and how they go about obtaining it, we designed a survey study conducted in Fall 2020. The data² was collected from current and former writing tutors from our seven regional campuses learning centers that generally employ between two and five English tutors. English coordinators who oversee writing tutors were contacted by email during the first week of September 2020 and asked to forward their current and former tutors a survey designed to collect both qualitative and quantitative data.³ A reminder email to the coordinators followed two weeks later, and the survey link was deactivated at the end of the month. Twelve tutors participated in the survey, with most (11 out of 12) identifying as female, and most (8 of 12) working as tutors at the time of the survey. Half of the survey pool were at least 22 years of age at the time when they obtained employment as tutors, which is representative of the nontraditional student population typically found on regional campuses. The tutors’ declared majors varied from English (8) to Nursing (1), Psychology (1), Education (1) and Liberal Studies (1).

In addition to collecting demographic information, the survey the tutors received in September 2020 had several multiple-choice and open-ended questions⁴. The questions asked about tutor confidence in their ability to tutor, formal and informal tutor training, what has helped tutors to understand what “students’ professors are looking for,” how tutors work to “understand professors’ expectations,” what English professors “seem to value in their students’ writing,” what tutors do if they lack information about a professors’ expectations,” and finally, what the “tutoring center/campus community [could] have done to help [tutors] . . . better understand the tutees’ professor[s’] expectations.” The authors of the paper processed the data by looking for salient themes in the qualitative data, also taking into consideration the quantitative data provided by the participants.

results

The data in this self-reporting study provides insight into what the tutors perceive as campus- and discipline-related knowledge that is important for running a successful tutoring session. One theme identified from the survey data was that participants had an arsenal of strategies they deployed in order to understand what their tutees and their professors wanted to see in the writing projects that were brought to the tutoring center. Some of these strategies were non-campus specific, meaning it was not necessary for tutors and tutees to be from the same campus. For example, the tutors read the course materials (essay prompt, syllabus) that the tutees provided. We also discovered, however, that tutors also relied on campus-specific tactics that were only possible because tutors and tutees belong to the same communities of practice. Due to the small size of regional campuses– population at the seven regional campuses ranges from roughly 500 to 3,000 students– the tutors were familiar with the tutees’ home communities, campuses, and even specific courses and professors (Kent State University, “Student Enrollment Data,” Institutional Research). The data in our study confirms the importance of the numerous ties that these tutors have with their tutees, and it also emphasizes the benefits that come from tutors being familiar with the professors whose students they were tutoring.

Non-campus Specific Strategies

Many strategies did not require that tutors share the same communities of practice with their tutees, such as reading the feedback that the professor left on the students’ papers, because it allowed them to understand their tutees’ professors’ expectations; in fact, six participants mentioned looking at the feedback provided by the instructors on drafts. Reviewing the instructors’ feedback may provide the tutor with insight into their expectations for revision. The drawback, however, is the need to rely on the tutee to share that information, and that is not always made available during the session, which may be the reason why only half of the participants mentioned this as a helpful strategy.

Another strategy involved asking the tutees to explain what their professors were looking for in an assignment. This was suggested by four participants, and is, indeed, a valuable aspect of the tutor-tutee interaction, as best tutoring practices require a tutor to follow the tutee’s lead at all times. When asked what they would do when they had no or very limited information about a professor’s expectations, T9 stated:

This is when I get the student to talk a bit more. Before even reading their paper, I urge the student (in a natural manner) to tell me what their paper is about and whatever they can retain about the assignment. Sometimes, if this is not easy to get from them, I begin reading and at random intervals, may stop and ask them to explain a topic point/idea so that I can better understand. I try as many methods as needed to get the student to converse with me on what they need their paper to do.

T9’s answer confirms that tutors understand the importance of having the student “talk to them more,” something Thompson associates with “directiveness,”which requires the tutees to take charge of their own learning and tell the tutors what they want to see accomplished during the session. According to Thompson, “Directiveness relates to how tutors get students to do things—to make revisions, to develop ideas through brainstorming” (446) by inviting them to figure out where they need help. Getting the students to open up and talk about their writing is the first step toward “directiveness.” Thonus also acknowledges that tutors instruct and provide direction to the tutees, but at the same time they warn about the danger of the tutor taking over the tutoring session and showing “‘too much’ involvement in the student’s work” (“Triangulation” 64). To counterbalance this tendency, Thonus emphasizes the important role of small talk (65). Engaging in small talk and using laughter to balance or temper directiveness is an important skill that seasoned tutors and teachers rely on. This skill is more easily developed when tutors utilize knowledge they have learned from observing the teachers on campus and their fellow tutors. 

Even when students do talk, asking them to explain the assignment to their tutor is not always helpful as students may misunderstand what they were asked to do or leave out important information. This can be easily corrected when the tutees provide the assignment sheet, but, again, that does not always happen. What can be even more helpful is the tutor’s familiarity with the professor or the assignment, which happens when the tutees and tutors belong to the same campus. However, the burden of clarifying expectations for assignments does not solely fall upon the instructor. Students must be active learners and accountable for their own success in tutoring. They must take detailed notes in class, clarify questions about a writing assignment with their professor, and then actively engage with their writing during a tutoring session.

The aforementioned strategies are not necessarily tied to a specific campus since they can be used when tutors and tutees come from multiple locations and institutions. Still, each strategy may be more effective when the participants in the tutoring process share the same spaces. This points to the need to consider the benefits of keeping regional campus centers open and available to students, even when other tutoring options are available and may be more cost-effective.

Campus-specific Strategies

Some strategies mentioned by our participants may be more likely to work when the tutors and tutees belong to a more compact unit, such as a regional campus. The tutors emphasized how helpful it is to share the same physical space because that allowed them to rely on one another and their tutoring coordinator for advice and support, especially when they begin tutoring. T11⁵ stated: “I knew that if there was anything I needed I almost always had someone right around the corner who could answer even my smallest questions.” This points to how important it is for the tutors to be surrounded by peers and have the support of the coordinator, who are all likely to be familiar with the campus culture and the students’ needs. This type of informal help seemed to replace more formal ways of tutor training, such as taking a peer-tutoring course, which, surprisingly, only five tutors stated that they were required to do as part of their training. Eight tutors pointed to the training they received from the tutoring coordinator, and four participants specifically mentioned other tutors as a source of support and inspiration during their first semester on the job; in some cases, such mentoring was formally required. T12 stated: “As part of my training, I had to observe sessions with other tutors. When I felt comfortable enough to do a session on my own, I had another tutor observe me and give a report to the coordinator. Then the coordinator observed me before I officially became a writing tutor.” Wenger explains that the members of a community of practice must interact and communicate with one another, and this engagement is essential to how they co-construct knowledge (74). He goes on to state that members in a specific community of practice “work together, they see each other every day, they talk with each other all the time, exchange information and opinions, and very directly influence each other’s understanding as a matter of routine. What makes a community of practice out of this medley of people is their mutual engagement in” the subject matter (75). It is true, however, that such cooperation does not necessarily depend on a tutor’s location; technology can facilitate the collaboration among tutors even when they do not share the same physical space, as may be the case with online tutoring companies.

Open collaboration with professors from the tutors’ home campus was also emphasized by participants. While reading the assignment directions is instrumental in the tutors’ ability to help tutees complete their work, at times instructors can leave out relevant information that may be conveyed verbally when the assignment is introduced in class. Without the context of the live classroom or clear prompts from instructors, tutors may not understand what direction or focus the paper should take. The solution to this problem is provided by T12 who wanted to see more clearly written prompts and collaborative relationships between instructors and writing centers. T12 stated:

I think some professors need to realize that the writing center is there to help their students succeed, and working together with us does wonders. Providing clearer expectations in assignments is a good start. I think it is important  for there to be a relationship between the writing center and instructors.

Tutors’ familiarity with the courses and instructors—especially at regional campuses—can help resolve any miscommunication between students and faculty about a writing assignment or feedback on a paper. If asking the student for clarification or insight does not help, tutors can directly contact faculty for clarification which can lessen “miscommunication between student and instructors” (Calvo and Ellis 428). Miscommunication or a breakdown in communication can still occur, however, as students may not fully understand future comments or prompts by an instructor or even fully understand a clarified writing prompt that a tutor explains to a student.  This said, the intervention of a tutor may still help. As Thonus explains, “more communication between course instructors and writing center personnel is desirable and in the tutees’ best interest,” and “in addition to the guidance a tutor offers, meeting with the instructor during a tutoring session may clarify points of confusion for students” (“Triangulation” 77; “Tutor” 125).        

Reaching out to the course instructor can, according to Laura Palucki Blake and T. Coleen Wynn, “yield new levels of efficiency and productivity, as well as new connections that contribute to student success” (48). Blake and Wynn also stress the importance of collaborative work between faculty and student services so that students are more successful learners. Thanks to the smaller size of regional campuses, this level of professor-tutor interaction promotes student engagement and connection to the campus and coursework since “[t]here is considerable strength in working within a broad partnership of campus constituents to leverage expertise and work collaboratively on shared issues” (Blake and Wynn 55).  Moreover, “[t]he level of support and social interaction peer tutors provide to other students is especially important during the pandemic, when students are more likely to be isolated and lacking connection to their institutions,” asserts George Kuh of Indiana University (qtd. in Anderson). Again, in a regional campus environment, tutors who possess familiarity with the institution are more likely to foster and encourage connections between students and their professors.

When asked what was most helpful when trying to understand the professor’s expectations during a tutoring session, eight participants pointed to the syllabi and assignment sheets. While undoubtedly helpful, there are obvious limitations to this strategy as not all students may be willing or prepared to share their course materials, including the assignment sheet, with tutors. Aware of this fact, having direct access to these materials was the participants’ number two answer to a later question that asked what the institution could do to help tutors do their job. Seven out of the twelve participants wanted to see all instructors provide the tutoring center with a copy of course materials, and only three mentioned having had access to a folder with professors’ syllabi and assignments during their first semester of tutoring. T5 stated: “Professors could bring a copy of their assignments directly to the tutors at the writing center for those students who don’t bring or lose their copies of their assignment expectations.” The solution—providing the tutoring centers with the course materials in advance—would only be possible on small regional campuses where tutors interact with only a handful of professors and their students. Since the eTutoring consortium, for example, provides tutoring to students from twelve states (eTutoring), it would not be feasible for writing instructors to send in their course materials directly to the eTutoring tutors.

Data from the survey also showed that tutors often struggled to understand what the tutee needed, and while the suggestion they provided was to seek clarification directly from professors, some were hesitant to reach out. When asked what else could be done to help the tutors with their job, five participants mentioned having conversations with students’ instructors. Two of the four participants specifically suggested that instructors provide a written document about their expectations as readers of student writing; T9 explained that they had used such a strategy in the past with good results:

Being a tutor that has often worked with professors and with peer tutors to create more resources for the center, I think it may help the tutoring center to perhaps work alongside professors to create a document that summarizes what each professor's main concerns may be. That way, tutors who have not had a particular teacher might be able to know them a little better.

This strategy is another aspect of the tutoring experience that cannot be easily duplicated when tutoring is outsourced because of the large number of professors who would have to be contacted by the outside tutoring company. Moreover, while helpful, creating such a document can nonetheless be burdensome for our regional campus professors who are already tasked with a high teaching load (4 and 5 courses per semester for tenured and non-tenure track professors, respectively). Additionally, this information already exists in rubrics and assignment prompts, but then the tutors have to rely on tutees to share them, unless professors make them available to the tutoring center.

Although direct communication with campus instructors was the most valued strategy singled out by the tutors, none mentioned it as being part of their training. Involving instructors in tutor training can be particularly beneficial for many reasons. First, it provides the tutors and instructors with an opportunity to ask and answer questions, and, in general, to share ideas. This is useful especially as not all instructors look for the same characteristics in their students’ writing. One of our survey questions required our participants to think of two English professors from their campus whose students they have helped and identify what the professors seemed to value in their students’ writing. The variety in the answers provided was staggering, ranging from rather vague statements such as “[e]ach professor is different, but they all want their students to learn something from the paper they are writing” (T4) to very specific points such as “having a strong thesis or evidence for their argument” (T12). Table 1 provides the list of issues mentioned by the tutors and the number of times they were brought up. This is not a comprehensive list of everything the tutors stated, and each item had to be mentioned more than once to be included here.

These writing concerns are definitely not new, and they are likely to be familiar to the tutors simply because they are good writers themselves. What makes this list interesting, however, is the tutors’ assertion that specific instructors seemed to value different aspects of academic writing; there was not a lot of overlap beyond having the tutor help the students understand the assignment and work with sources, which were the only two issues singled out by half of the participants. Overall, this highlights the challenges tutors face in anticipating what instructors want, and how demanding their job can be as they try to help students meet the course expectations. While the tutors are accomplished writers themselves, the feedback we received from them suggests that they value the input they can receive from professors who are the main audience for the students’ paper. In other words, the tutors’ understanding of students’ writing needs is augmented by their knowledge about various professors that they obtained from being part of the campus community. 

Inviting instructors to be part of the tutor-training process can help facilitate the ongoing communication between tutors and instructors that so many of our participants seemed to crave. When asked for suggestions for improving their ability to help students, the tutors overwhelmingly mentioned contacting the instructor as one of the strategies they would like to see implemented more. T11 stated:

Potentially make a direct line of contact between tutors and professors. That way if I get the same question presented by multiple students in one course, I can take free time during a shift to get in contact with the professor myself for reference for future sessions. Even if we were given a list of professors who's [sic] students we will most likely/definitely be seeing that semester and we have their email, their office hours, if they have any other contact information, etc. That way if I have something I need to address I can check a sheet for reference and see that the professor has  office hours soon, so maybe I can drop in and bring my questions/concerns.

When tutors feel comfortable contacting the course instructors, they do not have to rely solely on guessing what students need to work on in a tutoring session. T11, however, pointed out that such access does not happen often as some instructors do not make themselves available even when the students themselves reach out to ask questions: “It helps immensely if the professors make themselves available for quick questions through email … I have had a lot of writers come in with zero access to a professor outside of class (or just EXTREMELY slow emails).”

While meeting the instructors can be beneficial, it may not be a realistic goal even on a small regional campus, simply due to conflicting course schedules and the sheer number of faculty teaching there. In a study from a large institution, Elizabeth Maffetone and Rachel McCabe recognize that “instructors and tutors are always supposed to be working to support student writers, [but] . . . also acknowledge the limitations set in place by institutional hierarchies . . . and the lack of resources (particularly time) available for developing direct lines of collaboration” (65). Moreover, the English faculty are not the only instructors who send students to the tutoring center; instructors from other disciplines may assign papers as well. This is something T1 pointed out, stating that it would be beneficial for tutors to “[s]pend at least a little bit of time meeting each English professor. However, not every writing assignment comes from English classes. In fact, the majority of people that I seem to get in the writing center come from science classes/disciplines.” Considering that numerous courses outside of freshman writing require students to write papers, it is not feasible for tutors to meet all instructors, especially as many campuses rely extensively on an ever-growing number of contingent faculty. Still, having some direct contact with the professors who are willing and able to attend meetings with tutors, is preferable since whenever instructors are included in tutor training or even interact with tutors, they may be more willing to encourage or even require tutoring for their students.

Another strategy that the tutors mentioned is learning about instructors’ expectations from working with multiple students taking the same course. This allows them to piece together a more complete picture of assignment requirements and what the tutees may need by combining what they have learned from several students about a particular instructor or assignment. This, however, can only happen on smaller campuses, where the tutoring center serves a limited number of courses. It would not be possible to use this strategy when dealing with students from multiple campuses.

One other advantage that tutees have when working with a regional campus tutoring center is when tutors have taken courses with the same instructor that the tutee currently has. A total of four participants mentioned how helpful this direct experience can be; although they may not have been in the same classroom as the tutees or even enrolled in the same course, they nonetheless have direct knowledge of how an instructor teaches and what they may value in student work. T9 explains that classroom experience with a professor translates into expertise to be shared with tutees: “I became known as the "expert" for one of our full-time English professors, and, as a result, I had tutees and tutors alike come to me for that professor specifically. I even had a repeat tutee come back to me to ask me for clarity on that particular professor's comments and marks.” This expertise, however, is more likely to happen when the tutoring center serves a smaller campus with a limited number of instructors. T4 stated: “Because I work for a smaller campus and was an English major, I had personal experience with a lot of the professors. So, I naturally knew from my own papers what they were looking for.” This feeling was echoed by another participant who stated that “I have had all of the full-time English professors at my campus, and I can gauge assignments based on that experience” (T9). In this instance, size does impact the ability to interact with faculty.

Finally, it is also important for tutors and tutees to share the same communities of practice outside of the campus because that may help them understand their tutees better. This is possible on commuter campuses where the tutors and students live within a limited radius. The demographic data we collected revealed that all but one tutor lived in the community surrounding their campus for at least three years prior to their tutoring job, and all but three had attended a local high school. When asked how familiar they were with most of their tutees’ home communities, five stated that they were very familiar, and two others claimed to be familiar. Only five participants selected the option “somewhat familiar,” and none chose “not familiar at all.” This familiarity is conducive to the type of tutor-tutee relationship based on “comfort and trust” that Thompson recommends (446).  Wenger explains that belonging to several overlapping communities strengthens the members’ ability to create relevant knowledge (76) as they draw on “overlapping forms of competence” (76). Such familiarity that leads to knowledge-making is difficult, if not impossible, to duplicate when tutoring is outsourced.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Although limited in terms of participants, our study nonetheless provides insight into what makes regional campus tutoring centers so valuable: the knowledge that tutors amass from sharing the same academic spaces with their tutees. Wenger explains that “[f]or organizations, ... learning is an issue of sustaining the interconnected communities of practice through which an organization knows what it knows and thus becomes effective and valuable as an organization” (8). While formal training that tutors receive impacts how they tutor, they also learn relevant information working informally with other tutors and with students. This is because regional campus tutors are familiar with and have easier access to students’ instructors, and they may know what instructors value in their students’ writing and the types of writing prompts they assign. Therefore, belonging to some of the same communities as the tutees, both on and off campus, allows our tutors to provide an individualized campus-centered tutoring experience that cannot be duplicated by other tutoring services that are not affiliated with a specific campus.

Our study points to the many ways in which students may benefit from working with small regional campus tutors who can provide a personalized tutoring experience. As tutors help students make sense of an assignment and the professor’s feedback, they can use their past experience with that particular professor or their students to shape what happens during the tutoring session. This is particularly important for struggling writers who need the tutors’ expertise to make sense of the course requirements and the professor’s expectations. We argue that the campus tutoring center provides students on regional campuses with an individualized experience driven by community-specific knowledge.

Any tutoring service can be improved, and our participants’ detailed and thoughtful answers to our inquiries point to the need to provide tutors more opportunities to enrich their knowledge. Suggestions to improve tutoring sessions include the following:

As small tutoring centers face budget cuts and competition from outside electronic tutoring services, it is crucial for them to justify their importance to student success and campus engagement and even argue that the campus should invest more—not less—in their services. This is especially important for campuses serving working-class communities, considering that private online tutoring services, such as Kegg, require students to cover part of the cost. As Shayla Griffin explains, tutoring becomes a matter of social justice as working-class students may not afford these private tutoring options. Kraft and Falken point out that “[a]ccess to tutoring is inherently unequal,” and working-class communities such as the ones served by our regional campuses have the greatest need for equitable access to tutoring, but are currently benefiting the least from it. By investing in the campus tutoring center, universities can provide affordable access to this service that is fundamental to student success.

Notes

1. eTutoring is particularly relevant for our campus because, unlike the other private tutoring companies mentioned here, eTutoring represents consortium of state and private universities across several states who pool resources in order to provide access to online tutoring to their students. As the website explains, “eTutoringOnline is an online tutoring platform which allows tutors to work with students synchronously and asynchronously, … [and is] used across North America in over 130 two and four-year, public and private colleges and universities.”

2. The study was approved by the authors’ institution- IRB 20-352.

3. The exact number of tutors invited to participate in the survey is unknown as we collected only completed surveys and each regional campus English coordinator was responsible for distributing surveys to their tutors.

4. A copy of the survey can be found in Appendix B.

5. Each anonymous survey response was randomly assigned a number from T1 to T12.

Works cited

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Blake, Laura Palucki, and T. Colleen Wynn.  “An Integrated View of Student Success at Small Colleges.” New Directions for Institutional Research, no. 184, 2020, pp. 47-59. https://doi.org/10.1002/ir.20321

Calvo, Rafael A., and Robert A. Ellis. “Students’ Conceptions of Tutor and Automated Feedback in Professional Writing.” Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 99, no 4, 2010, pp. 427-37. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2010.tb01072.x  

eTutoring. “About Tutoringonline.org.” eTutoring, https://etutoringonline.org/about.cfm. Accessed 28 May 2021.

Griffin, Shalya. “If ‘Most Students Should Stay Home,’ What Do I Do with My Kids?” Medium. 23 July 2020, https://medium.com/@shaylargriffin/if-most-students-should-stay-home-what-do-i-do-with-my-kids-b7b7f32e11df

Ianetta, Melissa and Lauren Fitzgerald.  The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors: Practice and Research, Oxford University Press, 2016. 

Institutional Research, Kent State University. Email 24 March 2021 to authors.

Kent State University, Institutional Research. “Kent Campus Retention.” Retention & Graduation Rates, www-s3-live.kent.edu/s3fs-root/s3fs-public/file/KC%20Retention%20Rates%202020%20Fall_0.pdf.  Accessed 28 May 2021.

---.  “Retention Rates for the Regional Campus System.” Retention & Graduation Rates, 5
www-s3-live.kent.edu/s3fs-root/s3fs-public/file/KC%20Retention%20Rates%202020%20Fall_0.pdf. Accessed 28 May 2021.

—. “Student Enrollment Data.”  https://www.kent.edu/ir/student-enrollment-data. Accessed 5 February 2023.

Kim, Edward. et al. “Kumon In: The Recent, Rapid Rise of Private Tutoring Centers,” EdWorkingPaper, 2021, pp. 21–367. https://doi.org/10.26300/z79x-mr65

Kraft, Matthew A., and Grace T. Falcon. “A Blueprint for Scaling Tutoring and Mentoring Across Public Schools,” AERA Open, vol. 1, no. 1, 2021, pp. 1-2. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/23328584211042858

Lee, Cynthia. “More than just Language Advising: Rapport in University English Writing Consultations and Implications for Tutor Training,” Language and Education, vol. 29, no. 5, 2015, pp. 430-52. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2015.1038275

Maffetone, Elizabeth, and Rachel McCabe. “Learning Institutional Ecologies for Inventive Collaboration in Writing Center/Classroom Collaboration.” Composition Studies, vol. 48, no. 3, 2020, pp. 53–69.

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Omdivar, Omid and Roman Kislov. “The Evolution of the Communities of Practice Approach: Toward Knowledgeability in a landscape of Practice--An Interview with Etienne Wenger-Trayner.” Journal of Management Inquiry, 2014, vol. 23, no. 3, 266-275. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1056492613505908  

Pfrenger, Wendy et al. “At First It Was Annoying”: Results from Requiring Writers in Developmental Courses to Visit the Writing Center.”  Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 15, no. 1, 2017, pp. 22- 35. http://www.praxisuwc.com/pfrenger-blasiman-and-winter-151

Thompson, Isabelle. “Scaffolding in the Writing Center: A Microanalysis of an Experienced Tutor’s Verbal and Nonverbal Tutoring Strategies.” Written Communication, vol. 26, no. 4, 2009, pp. 417-453. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0741088309342364  

Thonus, Terese. “Triangulation in the Writing Center: Tutor, Tutee, and Instructor Perceptions of the Tutor’s Role.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 22, no. 1, 2001, pp. 58-82. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43442136

---. “Tutor and Student Assessments of Academic Writing Tutorials: What is “success”?” Assessing Writing, vol. 8, no. 2, 2002, pp. 110-34. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1075-2935(03)00002-3  

Wells, Jaclyn. “Why We Resist ‘Leading the Horse’: Required Tutoring, RAD Research, and our Writing Center Ideals.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 25, no. 2, 2016, pp. 87-114. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43824058

Wenger, Etienne. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge University Press, 1999

appendix A

Table 1: List of ideas suggested by participants when asked what instructors looked for in an assignment.

Appendix B

Thank you for participating in this research project. We are looking at strategies tutors use to obtain the institutional knowledge needed to help their tutees. Please answer each question in detail whenever possible. The survey is anonymous as you will not be asked to provide your easily identifying information such as your name, email, or campus. The survey (State University IRB Protocol #20-328) should take about 10-15 minutes. If you have questions, email the investigators at ___________

This survey is for current and former English tutors from Kent State regional campuses.

1. Do you identify as male, female, or other?

   Male                 Female              Other: ___________

2. What age were you when you began tutoring at a Kent State regional campus?

3. Had you lived in our area for at least 3 years prior to starting your tutoring job?

   Yes                               No

4. Did you attend a local high school for at least one year?

   Yes                               No

5. Are you a current or former English tutor for a Kent State regional campus?

   Former

   Current

6. During your tutoring years, are/were you an undergraduate or graduate student? (select all that apply)

   Undergraduate Freshman

   Undergraduate Sophomore

   Undergraduate Junior

   Undergraduate Senior

   Both undergraduate and graduate

7. What is/was your major during your tutoring years?

8. For how many semesters have you been tutoring? If you are a former tutor, how many semesters total did you tutor?

9. How familiar are you with the communities where most of your tutees live?

   Very familiar      Familiar            Somewhat familiar          Not familiar at all

10. How confident were you in your tutoring ability during the first semester tutoring?

    Very confident   Confident          Somewhat confident       Not confident at all

11. Why? In a few sentences, explain your answer.

12. How confident were you in your tutoring ability during the second and/or third semester tutoring?

    Very confident   Confident          Somewhat confident       Not confident at all

13. Why? In a few sentences, explain your answer.

14. What formal training were you given prior or during your first semester tutoring? (select all that apply)

    Did not receive any formal training

    Took a peer tutoring course

    Was trained by the coordinator

    Was provided a book or journal articles to read

    Other:

15. What type of informal training were you given prior or during your first semester tutoring? (select all that apply)

    ●      Observed the other tutors

    ●      Was mentored by another tutor

    ●      Took some of the courses for which tutees visit the tutoring center

    ●      Approached or was approached by some professors with information from the course

    ●      Had access to a folder with information about individual instructors where you were able to view the materials (syllabi, assignments, etc.)

    ●      Other:

16. During the tutoring session, what helped you understand the assignment expectations of the student’s professor? (select all that apply)

    The student provided course materials (syllabi, assignments, blackboard access, etc.)

    The student explained the professor’s expectations

    Another tutor or your coordinator explained the professor’s expectations

    Another student from the same course provided information about the professor’s expectations

    Other:

17. In general, what has helped you understand what the students' professors are looking for?

18. Explain at least three strategies or resources that you used to understand professors’ expectations.

19. Think of two English professors at your campus whose students you have helped. What did the professors seem to value in their students’ writing? (You do not need to identify the professors here.)

20. What do you do when you have no or very limited information about a professor’s expectations?

21. What else could the tutoring center/campus community have done to help you better understand the tutees’ professor expectations?

22. What else do you wish you could do/have done to better understand the tutees’ professor expectations?