By Emily Egna
Listen to this submission by clicking play below!
COVID-19 has completely changed our relationship with technology. Even three years after the pandemic, 35% of workers with jobs that can be completed remotely are working entirely from home and 41% are working hybrid. This shift from in-person to remote has been mimicked in Penn State’s writing center as we still offer asynchronous tutoring even several years after the end of the pandemic. But is asynchronous tutoring an effective alternative to synchronous tutoring, or are too many integral, effective elements lost?
At Penn State, asynchronous tutoring contains three things: in-text comments, a summary statement including three action items, and a video of the tutor explaining their feedback. A synchronous session, on the other hand, whether in-person or online, is more of a conversation. As someone who has both tutored and been tutored synchronously and asynchronously, I have mixed feelings. On one hand, asynchronous tutoring is convenient. It takes a few minutes for a student to submit their work and a couple of days for a tutor to review the assignment and send it back. It eliminates the need for the student to travel to the writing center and attend an appointment, and, on the tutor’s side, makes for a more flexible schedule. Access to asynchronous tutoring is also an enormous advantage for students with different learning styles. Specifically, those who absorb and process information best through reading thrive in asynchronous settings where they are given written feedback and the opportunity to work through it on their own. In an academic world where a large portion of learning takes place through lectures, asynchronous tutorials provide a refreshing system of learning for students who don’t do as well with auditory material. But if you look beyond convenience and asynchronous tutoring’s ability to cater to students with different learning styles, the other advantages of asynchronous tutoring are few.
For one, synchronous tutoring allows a tutee to answer questions and explain their process in conversation with a tutor.
Especially for beginner writers, there is often inconsistency between what is on the page and what comes out of the student’s mouth when they’re asked, “what are you writing about?” Discussing that discrepancy helps the tutor learn the writer’s goals and guides the rest of the session.
In an asynchronous tutorial, the tutor might write a question in the margin, but the tutee is not present to explain their choice, making it difficult for the tutor to adjust the rest of their comments to match the tutee’s response.
Recently, I conducted an asynchronous tutorial for an assignment in my peer tutor training class and found many of my margin comments to be questions. I yearned to talk with the student about their motive for writing and the reasons they made specific choices in their paper, but I couldn’t.
If I was in a synchronous tutorial, I would have asked the writer those questions and then offered additional advice based on their response. While my margin questions were likely helpful, they would be even more helpful if they were able to guide a conversation about the writer and their work.
Another aspect that is lost in asynchronous tutoring is the connection between a tutor and a tutee. In the chapter “Inside the Tutoring Session” in The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors, the first tip for conducting a synchronous tutoring session is creating a “friendly ambience…to put [the student] at ease.” The chapter then explores a couple of tactics that can be employed to do this: introducing yourself and sitting side-by-side to suggest “you are an ally, not an authoritarian figure.” These methods all work together to create a collaborative environment where a writer is comfortable discussing and improving their work. But in an asynchronous situation, creating this environment becomes almost impossible.
Introducing yourself in an asynchronous tutorial, for example, can be done in the explanatory video, but the effect is not the same as a warm welcome when a student enters the center. In a study on the benefits of small talk in office settings, an assistant professor at the University of Kansas determined “people generally feel better, have more positive social emotions and a sense of connection when engaging in small talk.” He also found that small talk improved sleep quality and cognitive development. While a writing center is not a workplace for the tutee, the two locations are both collaborative, structured, and focused on skill development, meaning the benefits of small talk extend to the writing center as well. Additionally, in a synchronous tutorial, the friendly greeting would precede and set the tone for the session, but in an asynchronous tutorial, the first part of the tutoring package is the link to the student’s document followed by the video link, meaning they are more than likely to open the document first. While a quick comment in the beginning of the video like “I loved reading your draft, and I look forward to see where you take it” can establish a small amount of rapport and trust, it doesn’t do so in the way thirty seconds of small talk does, nor does it help, if, by the time the student watches the video, they’ve already gone through their written feedback.
Similarly to small talk, no aspect of the asynchronous session can fully replace the message of collaboration and comradery exuded when a tutor and tutee sit side-by-side. The chapter warns that a tutor sitting across from a tutee conveys the nonverbal message of authority, which may result in students agreeing with everything their tutor says if they don’t understand so they don’t appear “stupid.” Similarly,
students often receive professor comments through margin notes which can lead to asynchronous feedback from a tutor carrying the same weight as a professor, much like sitting across from a tutee does. This power imbalance may also lead to tutees feeling that they have to implement every suggestion because they view tutors as experts rather than peers trained to guide them in the writing process.
While it’s necessary for a tutor to have some authority to keep the session on track, too much authority decreases the productivity of the asynchronous tutorial because it reduces student autonomy.
While asynchronous tutoring is tempting because of its convenience and appeal to students with different learning styles, us tutors must remember what is lost in the asynchronous mode. The video component of Penn State’s asynchronous package does attempt to bridge the gap between synchronous and asynchronous tutorials, but it doesn’t take the place of the discussion, friendly ambience, or sense of collaboration that serve as the backbone of synchronous tutoring. It is our job as tutors to observe the effects of asynchronous tutoring in our writing centers both on ourselves and on our tutees. We must evaluate the advantages in the context of the disadvantages to decide how to proceed so we can create an environment conducive to learning to ensure we provide healthy growing experiences for all writers.
About the Author
Emily Egna is currently a sophomore double majoring in English and journalism and minoring in Latin at Penn State. She works as a tutor for Penn State Learning and documents public meetings for Centre Documenters. She also serves as the public relations chair for The Penn State Thespian Society, poetry editor for Kalliope literary magazine, and vice president of club archery. In her free time, she likes to read, swim, and feed the fish at the campus pond.