...FROM THE EDITOR...

For those who are exploring online tutoring, are considering it, or are ac-tively engaged in it, you’ll find inter-esting reading in this issue which fo-cuses heavily on our role in online tutoring as well as on technology in our labs. Justin Jackson’s analysis of what online tutoring can and should of-fer is an interesting counterbalance to what Holly Moe found when studying a commercial online tutoring service.

With Holly Moe’s article, we are ini-tiating what we hope will be an occa-sional feature in the newsletter, a “web study.” While Irene Lurkis Clark and Karen Rowan offer us a book review, Holly Moe provides us with her re-view/study of a website and what it of-fers. This suggests that just as we look critically at what print media offer us, we can also do the same with other media such as websites—those sources that are becoming ever more dominant in our students’ lives.

Returning to a more basic question, Indigo Fleming-Powers reflects on the benefits of tutoring for tutors. Her answers should help other tutors real-ize what they have gained and—when they begin preparing their résumés— what skills they can list there.

• Muriel Harris, editor

...INSIDE...

Interfacing the Faceless: Maximizing the Advantages of Online Tutoring

• J.A. Jackson 1

Review of Taking Flight with OWLS: Research into Technology Use in Writing Centers. Ed. James Inman and Donna

Interfacing the faceless: Maximizing the advantages of online tutoring

As writing labs continue to branch out into cyberspace, questions abound as to the potential changing role of the writing lab, especially in its capacity online. Should the OWL (Online Writ-ing Lab) act as a resource medium, providing users with a variety of writer-related tools (including hand-outs, interactive workshops, exercises, and additional links to more re-sources)? Or can it be a medium in which one conducts tutorials as well? While the answer to the first question has been answered with a resounding “yes,” the second question evokes a much quieter, more reserved response. An OWL that provides handouts, exer-cises, etc. simply replaces a grammar handbook, a rhetorical guideline to the writing process, or various workbooks; it is nothing more than an extension of the tools writers already have at their disposal; the OWL conveniently makes these resources accessible online. But the second question, and “the tools” it seemingly replaces, threatens the very nature of the writing lab: the face-to-face (f2f) tutorial cannot be processed through fiber-optics, for both the writer and the tutor are real individuals, with real writing needs; it is an on-going dialogue that needs eye contact, body language, direct and indirect question-ing, and the writer’s response. At its foundation, the tutorial is writer-cen-tered, and the tutor’s job is to facilitate the writer’s discovery of his or her writing self. But online, where is the tutor? Perhaps more importantly, where is the writer? The most frighten-ing prospect of the online tutorial is that all one is left with is the writing and not the writer, the product and not the process.

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My concern here is with the ways in which the online tutorial, though through a seemingly antithetical me-dium for its purpose, can in fact appro-priate many of the same gestures f2f tutorials employ when engaging writ-ers. I am not arguing that online tutori-als can ever replace f2f tutorials; they cannot, and it would be dangerously naive to believe so. In fact, when Purdue students engage us online, we try our hardest to convince them to come into the Writing Lab to talk with us. Online tutorials, however, offer tu-tors unique opportunities when they engage the writer and vice versa; it is up to the tutor to minimize the inherent disadvantages of the online tutorial while maximizing its distinct advan-tages. Much like the f2f tutorial, each tutor must identify his or her strengths as an online tutor, understand the lim-its and opportunities of the online “dia-logue,” and, perhaps most importantly, develop an online “voice.” Although I have had the opportunity to work with MOO on several occasions, I do not have any practical experience tutoring writers via this medium; I could only theorize as to its advantages and disad-vantages, predict the way in which one-to-one pedagogy may work in a MOO. Therefore, I will only concen-trate on the medium I have been work-ing with for the past thirteen months (as both tutor and coordinator of online tutorials at Purdue University’s OWL): tutoring via email. My focus will be three-pronged: 1) to demonstrate the ways in which traditional one-to-one teaching pedagogy can be utilized online; 2) more specifically, to demon-strate the ways in which writer-cen-tered self questioning (and its inherency in this online process), tutor-based questioning, and the use of infor-mation-based direction (via hyperlinks) can be employed to give the online tu-torial a unique flavor not experienced in a face-to-face setting; and 3) to dem-onstrate how when one remains con-scious of these first two aspects, and vigilant in their application, can online tutorials avoid the unpleasant fate of becoming a “glamorized grammar hotline.”

Before discussing online tutoring, I offer the following background infor-mation as to how we coordinate online tutorials at Purdue University’s OWL. There are five graduate tutors who cur-rently work online, and all also engage in f2f tutorials in the Writing Lab as well. Each tutor is assigned to a par-ticular day of the week when he or she responds to any writing-related inquir-ies. Because of obvious time con-straints, each tutor works online only one hour per week. I find it helpful to ask each tutor to respond on his or her given day for only about forty to forty-five minutes; this allows up to twenty minutes for additional response if a writer has follow-up questions/con-cerns (which is often the case). Most of our tutors put in more than one hour per week, and are happy to do so, when engaged with a writer in an on-going dialogue. We are very fortunate at Purdue to be able to also have an “hourly” tutor (i.e., a tutor who works for an hourly rate outside of the Lab) to “clean up” any of the day’s unan-swered requests (and to attend to weekend inquiries), as we try to re-spond to all requests within twenty-four hours; our “hourly” tutor is one of our regular online tutors who agrees to these extra duties. Being the coordina-tor, along with having my own online tutoring day, it is also my responsibil-ity to answer any question that the other tutors cannot (usually administra-tive questions), and to help in the “clean up” process. The most impor-tant aspect is for all of us to communi-cate with one another (usually via email), letting a tutor know if he or she has a follow-up response to an initial inquiry. We also ask each other to re-spond to an email if the question is in a tutor’s particular area of study/special-ization. This unique characteristic of the online tutorial has become one of our most valued commodities, espe-cially considering the variety and range of questions we receive—from how one should go about constructing a re-search grant proposal to how one can distinguish between countable and un-countable nouns. The writer benefits from this format because the special-ized tutor can ask appropriate ques-tions, offer helpful insights, or recom-mend various source materials (writers find this last one extremely valuable). Though our online tutorials still act as a supplement to our Writing Lab and even to our OWL, the online tutorial is becoming a more oft-used service by a variety of writers, from a variety of countries, with a variety of needs. Un-deniably, the more online tutorials pro-liferate, the more administrative con-cerns will need to be addressed; subsequently, this will entail more pedagogical dialoging that I hope my essay addresses.

In 1995, Muriel Harris posited that, “as the Internet grows and develops, on-line writing centers will take on new shapes and provide learning envi-ronments for writers in ways we can-not yet predict” (4). And as these new learning environments morph, they si-multaneously transform the tutoring environment, challenging instructors to “do what we do” in this new setting. Do we ignore the new tutoring oppor-tunities afforded us by this new me-dium in order to preserve every aspect of traditional one-to-one pedagogy, the very foundation of which is the f2f ex-perience? Or does our application of one-to-one pedagogy really even risk becoming non-extant, ineffectual within this new medium—a paranoid invention of techno-phobes? Ulti-mately, one must not work within the confines of this dichotomy?¹ One’s ap-proach to tutoring online will undoubt-edly have to undergo some changes, but virtually everything one is taught about effective f2f peer tutoring lies at the core of successful online interac-tion between tutor and writer: make sure the writer takes ownership of his or her own work, always ask questions, and allow the writer to make the neces-sary corrections.

Having had been exclusively a f2f tutor for six years prior to going online, I was slightly hesitant about the new medium. I was uneasy about the absence of a face across from me. I was worried that the writer who seeks help online loses the most important aspect of the tutoring process: confirm-ing/preserving his or her own writer-ness. The only thing in the online ex-perience, I thought, is the writing on the screen, the product minus the pro-ducer. I quickly found this to be un-true. For example, every tutor is famil-iar with the “I’m just not a good writer” confession. Online, however, this “confession” takes a new shape, and it provides the writer, this seem-ingly absent participant, a medium in which to unabashedly vent writing frustrations. In many cases, this face-less individual shares writing woes in a short paragraph or two, indicating what frustrates her the most, what troubles she has had consistently throughout the years (and this gives the online tutor invaluable insight and a great place to start). For the writer, this “confession” acts as a pseudo-apology, and (though the writer usually isn’t aware) it acts as a first stage of the self-reflection pro-cess (more importantly, this takes place through writing). Even more paradoxically, it seems to be the very absence of the tutor’s face, and the online “screen” of anonymity for writ-ers, that allows the cathartic ability to say whatever they wish—about writing in general or about themselves specifi-cally as writers.

This inherent self-critiquing process of the online tutorial, beginning as early as the “confession” stage, eventu-ally will empower the writer if the tu-tor can harness this obvious advantage of the medium. In fact, what I believed to be a “faceless” medium turned out to be anything but “faceless.” From the beginning, it was a miscalculation of the place of the face. The online tuto-rial can in fact become a f2f tutorial— the writer facing herself through her own writing. The online tutorial, be-cause of the medium itself, cannot help but aid the online tutor in helping the writer critique her own writing, facili-tating the first step for the writer-cen-tered tutorial: “to develop their critical powers in order to appraise their work as they progress. Without this ability to draw back from what has been writ-ten—to question its content, consider alternatives, or wonder what’s miss-ing—writers are less apt to revise in any meaningful way” (Harris, Teach-ing One-to-One 22). The critical pow-ers are already put in motion, however, before the online tutorial begins. Be-cause the tutor has no face, because we are dealing in an asynchronous me-dium (as opposed to a synchronous f2f tutorial), because we cannot ask a se-ries of questions to garner a response, writers often appraise their work be-fore the tutorial, realizing that their guidance will be needed in the process, and that the more specific they are with their concerns, the more specific the tutor can be with responses/follow-up questions (and if writers are not aware of this, it is the tutor’s job to make them conscious of this aspect of the medium). The online tutor will often find very general self-evaluation from the writer in a specific area within the writing process—“I can’t get started,” “I don’t know how to use commas,” “I don’t know if my introduction is clear enough.” There is undeniably a greater onus of writer-centered responsibility online; the “faceless” tutor online does not sit across the table with a friendly smile, nor can the writer await the questioning process that has proved so successful in the past. Without writer-prompted questions, the online tutor cannot tailor a response to suit the writer’s needs and must make sure the online writer is aware of this; it is per-haps one of the most crucial aspects of “building rapport” online.

The above theoretical frame is per-haps misleading to those who have yet to experience an online tutorial. Writ-ers do not always come prepared with specific questions—or any questions at all. As in the f2f tutorial, writers oftentimes come into the online tutorial seeking an editor not a tutor, or are simply unaware as to what it is we do. Like the f2f tutorial, the online tutor’s job is to explain our role as tutor, what we hope to accomplish, and what it will take from the writer in order to ac-complish this (namely, specific ques-tions or some sort of guidance from the writer—“help us to help you”). I have often been confronted with: “To whom it may concern, here’s my essay. Can you correct whatever needs to be cor-rected. I need this by Wednesday. Thank you.” We have created a num-ber of files (boilerplates) that respond to oft-repeated requests: basic MLA and APA documentation information (and some common specific citation requests as well), for example. If we receive “proofreading” requests, we call up the file “policies,” which fully explains to the writer what it is we do. We may then tailor a couple of general questions to give writers an idea as to what they can do to help us help them. We then, of course, always invite writ-ers back once they have figured out a specific question or two. Ultimately this accomplishes two very important things for the writer (and for the tutor): 1) it allows writers to decide if this is a service they would like to use; 2) if the answer to the first question is “yes,” then it initiates a writer’s evaluative process. Writers must begin to pinpoint their specific areas of concern, then de-sign questions to aid our comprehen-sion of these concerns.

This inherent self-reflective quality of the online tutorial has been often recognized, though sometimes with quite a bit of reservation and skepti-cism: “More theoretically, some writ-ing center folks point out that an OWL locates learning about writing ‘in’ writ-ing—as writers online must gloss their own text with questions and commen-tary for the tutor, and then must inter-pret the tutor’s written response” (Spooner 6). From my experience, the online tutor will have little trouble at all finding the practical use within this “theoretical” aspect. Writers often be-come startled when they realize they can discuss themselves in the third per-son, that their writing is something they not only produce but can critique (a crucial step in claiming owner-ship)—and via online the writer must critique. The simultaneity of the writer’s writer-reader-writer mode be-gins almost as immediately as the tutor asks the first question. To counter the seemingly Pollyanna theoretical as-sumptions presented here, Spooner goes on to question the practicality of the online tutorial, noting that a lack of participation from the student may kill the whole process. As the online tutor develops his or her online questioning/ writing skills (and this takes some time for even the most experienced f2f tu-tor), a lack of writer participation will begin to decrease rapidly; in fact, stu-dent-writers can become so comfort-able with the online medium in general that they rarely hesitate to ask follow-up questions (even in the form of thank you notes). As more and more people use the internet, the comfort level in-creases, barriers of communication re-sistance break down, and this of course will trickle down into the online tuto-rial (as will some of the negative as-pects of “point-and-click” consumer-ism, which I will address later).

At the heart of this discussion is the inter-relatedness of the questioning process and the writer-centered tutorial (both f2f and online), and this is cer-tainly nothing new to one-to-one peda-gogy. Spooner asserts that while creat-ing a “student-centered, non-directive, response oriented” dynamic is difficult enough in a f2f setting, it becomes “impossible” to do so via an online medium “for all but the most accom-plished of tutors” (7). Spooner is per-haps being too dismissive here. For some reason, it seems that the onus has shifted from the writer in this writer-centered pedagogy to the tutor. What if the tutor becomes a present absence (there but not there)? This seems to be one of the tenuous roles of the tutor— to establish one’s presence online, to establish a “voice,” but to avoid be-coming the faceless Superman with all of the answers. We want our presence known without really establishing our presence; we want writers to discover their writerness not because of us but because of the questions they ask, be-cause of the guidance they give us. The uniqueness of this situation, this present absence, is not a liability; it can very much be an advantage to the writer, as the online medium estab-lishes the necessity for writer-centered responsibility, a responsibility that must be delicately fostered by the online tutor.

Perhaps fittingly, much of this is ac-complished by utilizing the same one-to-one pedagogy as the f2f tutorial. Over the past year, I witnessed an online tutor struggle to first try to find his “face” online, to establish his pres-ence; then, once he discovered that the existence of his “face” could possibly mean a de-centering of the writer-cen-tered tutorial, I watched him quickly try to annihilate his “face,” replacing it with an online “voice,” which shifts the focus back on the writer and away from the tutor. The transformation hap-pened almost overnight. When Geoff began tutoring online in the fall, he was not doing f2f tutorials concur-rently. He and I talked about online tu-toring pedagogy, but it was slightly difficult, as I was attempting to bridge the online and the f2f medium utilizing similar pedagogy. Geoff, however, had not experienced either. When he began tutoring online, he seemed to establish his “face” in a very pointed way: by answering questions directly, by pro-viding straightforward responses to the questions being asked. The process be-came tutor-centered for Geoff—how else was he supposed to do his job? In the spring, however, a tutoring position opened up in the Lab, and Geoff was invited to join the staff. Almost in-stantly, as soon as he began doing f2f tutorials, as soon as he saw the impor-tance of de-centering himself as tutor and establishing a writer-centered dy-namic (through both direct and non-di-rect questioning), Geoff’s online voice emerged and silenced his presence. No longer were his responses direct an-swers; rather, he found online writers responding more positively to his “Socratic” questioning. More intrigu-ing was how his online “voice” devel-oped so quickly. His online voice be-came very engaging, and writer follow-up questions increased dramati-cally (as did the thank you notes). Geoff has noted that his focus shifted from the writing to the writer, but that the only way to do this was to let the writer do most of the work. He needed only to ask the questions to which, as a reader, he wanted answers. Geoff came to realize that when he answered ques-tions directly (even the vaguest of questions), he was focusing on the writing; when he asked questions, however, the focus shifted back to the writer (hence the proliferation of fol-low-up questions from writers).

What is writer-centered tutoring if not question-based? In fact, when the writer asks the online tutor a question, the tutor needs to read the question in its proper context: that is, this is not a question posed to me but a question that the writer has posed to herself us-ing me as a mirror. The inter-facing here is between the writer and herself, hence my role as a present absence. This characteristic of the questioning process must be kept in mind at all times if the tutor is to stay focused on the writer and not the writing. Jan C. Thompson has aptly labeled this writer-centered questioning process metacognition: “ways of thinking about their own thought and communi-cation processes,” which will act as “a foundation for more successful and in-dependent thinking and communicat-ing in the future” (2). In fact, many of the self-questioning ideals Thompson highlights in the f2f tutorial are indeed inherent within the online tutoring ex-perience. For example, she writes, “If helping students become more inde-pendent writers is one of our goals, and if questioning is a metacognitive strat-egy that can foster their independence, then it seems reasonable to have as an-other central goal that students learn to formulate their own questions” (3). The online tutorial can never not be doing this. The writer, as I have noted before, must help the tutor help him or her. Furthermore, writers must formu-late these questions about their writing through writing.

Oftentimes, writers, in communicat-ing their concerns/questions answer their own concerns/questions. One of the most exciting moments for the online tutor is when a writer answers his or her own question. For example, we’ve had writers send their introduc-tory paragraph(s) and express concern over the absence of a thesis: “Here’s my introduction, but I can’t think of a good thesis that sums up my argu-ment.” The tutor may respond, “What do you think your argument is?” The writer at that moment, whether aware of it or not, must construct a thesis in order to respond to the initial question (and a series of further questions can stem from this). The writer often re-plies, “O.K., here’s my argument . . .” Many times, by the end of the state-ment, the writer will ask, “will this line work as my thesis?” And it usually does. Sometimes, the writer still doesn’t discover that he has con-structed a thesis, so the tutor simply has to ask, “what’s wrong with the sen-tence you provided me? Does it state your main claim?” Unlike the f2f tuto-rial where there is the oral-aural rela-tionship between tutor and writer, online provides only one medium— writing. How many times has the f2f tutor experienced this same thing in verbal communication, only to find the writer asking, “what did I say again” or “I just can’t write what I say” when the tutor points out that the writer just ut-tered a perfectly usable thesis. I have found that writer-centered metacog-nition is one of the greatest advantages of the online medium, and to maximize its potential, I formed my approach to online tutoring around this core.

It should be noted, however, that the questions one asks online have to be carefully formulated, which obviously takes practice. Too vague a question at the wrong time may frighten writers away; too direct of a response at the wrong time may place too much focus on the writing. This of course leads to the ever-popular dichotomy of directive versus non-directive tutoring.

Oftentimes the writer will ask a two-pronged question, though the writer may see it as simply one question. The question may be both about the writing in front of the tutor, but it may also be an information-based question. These types of inquiries are very common for the online tutor, and can be very tricky to answer—tricky not in the sense that they are difficult but in the balancing act the tutor must perform between di-rective and non-directive response. Sometimes, as Harris notes, a directive approach—“telling”—can be far more productive in the tutorial than leading the writer through questioning (One-to-One 69). But what if the writer’s re-quest weaves a question-based concern within an information-based need?

Many ESL questions fit this two-pronged variety. There are a number of metacognitive questions the tutor can ask, but there is also an abundance of information-based material the writer may need. Here again, the online me-dium affords the tutor a unique oppor-tunity. We often receive very specific requests from ESL writers, usually concerned with grammatical/syntacti-cal issues. Very often, the ESL writer will provide the tutor with a number of sentences, inquiring as to which one is “correct.” This of course can become difficult to explain when more than one of the constructions is indeed “cor-rect.” For example, the writer may in-dicate that there is a “tense problem” in the sentences provided: “Dear Teach-ers, which one of the sentences is cor-rect? 1) I have gone to the store. 2) I had gone to the store. 3) I will have gone to the store. Thank you.” One may begin by shifting the focus back on the writer by asking, “What do you think the differences are? It will be helpful for me to understand how you see the tense differences? Can you ex-plain them to me?” One may then wish to follow up this questioning phase with some information-based direction. This becomes extremely interactive online, as the tutor can provide hyperlinks in his or her response.

Purdue’s OWL has over one hundred and thirty handouts that act as our foundation for information-based re-sponses. In the above example, I would provide a couple of hyperlinks that deal explicitly with tense. I would then ask the writer some more questions re-garding the information I provided and try to get him to make some connec-tions between the information, his re-quest, and my initial questions. What becomes even more advantageous is that all of this takes place on pop-up screens on the computer. Here, the writer can look at his sentences, my questions, and the information pro-vided all on one screen, all simulta-neously. Writers appreciate the mixture of information-based direction and questioning. It allows the tutor to “in-trude” with the information and then step out of the picture again when he or she asks pertinent questions, leaving writers to face their own writing. This also makes it much easier to explain the concept that there may not be one “correct” answer for every question. When writers are engaged in the two-pronged process, they are provided with the information that demonstrates the occasional difficulty of finding one “correct” answer along with the ques-tions that lead to this discovery. Here’s a writer’s reply to my questions re-garding the “correct” use of “skin” or “skins” in a local paper:

To your question “What’s the difference?” my answer is sim-ply, I felt comfortable with my opinion. It didn’t occur to me to think in terms of how my cousin could be right. I thank you for asking that question. Having de-scribed my thinking, perhaps the question tells me more than what it literally asks. The idea that the printed message could be correct and conveying a slightly differ-ent meaning never entered my mind. The next time I encounter a similar problem, the slight dif-ference in wording should call forth the red flag you have given me. Again many thanks.

This is a common response to much of our information-based questioning. It allows the writer to engage himself in not only a thinking process but to see the applications to the writing process as well.

A lot of the success of the online tu-torial is founded upon the idea of this metacognitive process, writer-centered self-questioning, facilitated of course by the online tutor. But what if the tutor’s questions go unanswered? That is to say, what if we receive no follow-up feedback from the writer. Unfortu-nately, this scenario is not that uncom-mon. But it’s not nearly as dim a picture as Spooner suggests: “Further, it’s my bet that typical online writing conferences will amount to only one round of turn-taking: the student sends a text with a question, and the tutor re-plies; exit” (7). Eric Crump has already responded to Spooner’s assumption and concedes Spooner’s “one round” assumption to be true. Crump, how-ever, maintains that this may attributed to “lack of familiarity with the technol-ogy and its culture,” and that “it’s cer-tainly not a product of technology it-self” (7). Since the Spooner-Crump debate in 1994, internet technology, access, and familiarity has grown ex-ponentially. Perhaps this is why at Purdue’s OWL we have seen the num-ber of “one-round” tutorials decrease. Perhaps our online tutors deserve much of the credit. Over the past year, as our online tutorials became more orga-nized, as our online tutors began ad-dressing real pedagogical concerns, as we each began looking at each other’s responses (all responses are saved in a folder), “one-round” tutorials de-creased drastically, while “multi-round” dialogues have increased. We have become more comfortable with our roles as online tutors, have ac-cepted these roles, and have begun to take advantage of the opportunities the online medium provides. Furthermore, why does the “one-round” have to stop with the student? Does the tutor simply sit in silence for the whole f2f tutorial if the writer does not respond? Or does the tutor seek clarification? I have, on occasion, posted follow-up questions to writers who have asked very engag-ing and complicated questions. I did not wait for a response to my questions from the writer. For the most part, what I found is that writers very much appreciated our help but simply did not respond. These “one-rounders” tend to be student-writers who are used to ask-ing questions, getting a response, job accomplished. Our questions “an-swered” their questions, leaving them quite comfortable with where they were in the writing process. They are quite simply not used to having some-one interested in feedback, especially online. Usually, when student-writers have a follow-up question, it is my ex-perience that they do not hesitate to ask (sometimes responding up to three times in a day to our various ques-tions). Writers in the business world, however, rarely fail to respond to our initial questions/response, even if it is a simple “thank you.” As internet use grows, writers will become more com-fortable with posing multi-rounded questions; it is the tutor’s job to facili-tate this process. Often, a simple invi-tation can aid in creating a dialoging atmosphere: for example, “I hope these questions help. If you have any more questions/concerns, please do not hesi-tate to email us.” And when writers are faced with a genuine question/concern, they rarely balk at the opportunity.

I hope this discussion helps alleviate worries that online tutorials may only act as a glamorized grammar hotline. There is no doubt that there are many pitfalls facing the online tutor; she must be aware that anything that is written as an “example” may be usurped by the writer; even “helpful language” provided by the tutor may be inserted into the text “uncritically” by the writer (Spooner 8). These are aspects of the medium the online tutor needs to remain extremely conscious of. But if the online tutor holds tightly to the foundations of one-to-one peda-gogy, many of these pitfalls can be avoided. Ask questions, give informa-

Book Review

My assistant and I waited eagerly for my copy of Taking Flight with OWLs, edited by James A. Inman and Donna

N. Sewell, because we were anxious to learn how other writing center direc-tors were using OWLs and concerned that ours was not working the way it ought to be. Now that we have both read the book, however, our impres-sion is that most OWLs are no more successful than ours; nor have we learned anything that makes us want to do anything differently. This insight has made the book worthwhile for us. However, the book would have been more useful and thought-provoking with a more theoretical and analytical approach.

Taking Flight with OWLs is essen-tially a book of stories, whose title might appropriately be “How I Did It,” as is the chronicle discovered in Victor Frankenstein’s lab in Mel Brooks’ sa-tiric film Young Frankenstein. Many of these stories make for interesting reading. However, because most of them are structured as narratives and situated quite locally, I found myself having to sift through them, looking for kernels of truth, generalizable ideas, perhaps theories, that could be applied in other contexts. Of course, many of these “stories” did draw con-clusions, most of them similar to those my assistant and I had already sus-pected: that OWLs are most useful when students are unable to come in for face-to-face (f2f) consultations (working students or students in re-mote locations), that it is difficult to get students to use them, that they are best suited for short questions rather than discussions of full text, that they tend to focus more on the text than on the student, that they tend to promote a fix-it shop mentality, but that they are sometimes very useful for students who are more comfortable writing than speaking f2f.. These are the conclu-sions I drew from reading the various narratives, and what would have been helpful to me would have been an in-troduction that summarized and ana-lyzed these ideas, thereby providing a critical focus to the book and problematizing some of the issues.

This is not to say that Taking Flight with OWLs does not contain some im-portant ideas. Subtitled “Examining Electronic Writing Center Work,” the book is structured according to differ-ent models of on-line tutoring, both synchronous and asynchronous, and also discusses other good ideas for in-corporating technology into the writing center, such as on-line scheduling sys-tems and posting materials on web sites. The first section examines the potential of incorporating technology into writing center work, using survey research to assess students’ and tutors’ reactions. Mark Shadle, in “The Spot-ted OWL: On-line Writing Labs as sites of Diversity, Controversy, and Identity,” reports on the results of 67 surveys from 39 states which indicate considerable resistance to the use of OWLs and the tendency for them not to receive a great deal of use. Never-theless, Shadle concludes that OWLs have the potential to change how we think of the writing center, urges people to keep working on their OWLs, and provides a checklist for creating one. This first section also in-cludes an excellent historical overview of OWLs by Lady Falls Brown, which also provides valuable suggestions for staffing and funding, and a report by Andy Curtis and Tim Roskams on the use of OWLs in Asia. This article notes that students’ expectations of what to expect from tutors’ responses on the OWL parallel similar expecta-tions in f2f conferences—for example, that Asian students tend to feel that the majority of information should be coming from teachers.

The second section titled “Narratives of Experience” presents five narratives of how various writing centers have in-corporated OWLs into their pedagogy. Denise Weeks notes that on-line tutori-als require considerable forethought and preparation and emphasizes that virtual access should not replace f2f interaction. In “Writing in the Elec-tronic Realm: Incorporating a New Medium Into the work of the writing Center,” Sharon Thomas, Mark Hara, and Danielle DeVoss discuss how in-structors in a first year composition course required students to e-mail their papers to a writing center account and then later piloted an Internet Relay Chat program. Their article makes the interesting observation that on-line tu-torials tend to be more evaluative and rigid, focusing more on the text than on the student, and that “on-line con-versations mask some important non-verbal cues such as facial expression and tone of voice.”

Section III, focusing on asynchro-nous electronic tutoring, begins with “The Asynchronous, On-line Writing Session: A Two-Way Stab in the Dark,” a cogently written article that addresses the advantages and disad-vantages of asynchronous tutoring. Noting its advantages for off-campus, working students, the article neverthe-less points out that this medium fails to foster on-going dialogue, promotes a fix-it shop mentality, does not enable students to understand their assign-ments, and, overall, is inferior to f2f interchanges. This perspective is simi-lar to that of the next article, “The Anxieties of Distance: On-line Tutors Reflect,” which reports that ESL stu-dents have difficulty understanding tu-tor feedback. More positive experi-ences are reported in “E-Mail Tutoring and Apprehensive Writers: What Re-search Tells Us,” citing the advantages of psychological distance for appre-hensive students, as are several articles in Section IV, focusing on “Synchro-nous Electronic Tutoring,” which de-scribe a Web-based system in which students and tutors work together on a paper which both can view simulta-neously. Some of the issues discussed in this section, however, seemed to be of interest to only a few OWL users, for example, the problem of disorderly students, who engage in virtual misbe-havior in MOO sessions (crude, rude, and lewd comments and gestures).

The most thought-provoking section is the fifth one, titled “Looking to the Future” which speculates on how com-puter technology may affect instruc-tion, administration, and research in writing centers. Most notable in this section is Muriel Harris’ essay “Mak-ing Up tomorrow’s Agenda and Shop-ping Lists Today: Preparing for Future Technologies in Writing Centers,” which raises questions about how writ-ing centers can use technology to help students develop useful search strate-gies in order to deal with the informa-tion overload. Harris cautions that it is important to allow time to consider how technology can be used to further a center’s mission and observes that some OWLs are constructed (hatched) without adequate consideration of how and why they should be used. This sec-tion, however, also suggests that be-cause technology is here to stay that writing centers must explore the poten-tial of OWLs, even if they do not ac-complish the same goals as f2f consultations, a position that is worth considering but difficult, and perhaps, not practical, to implement. Eric Crump’s idea that because writing centers are on the margins, they are uniquely situated to embrace the innovative is interesting in theory, but it also suggests a “let’s do it because we can” attitude that may not yield worthwhile results.

It is always useful to hear about hat other writing center directors are doing with technology, and I am glad that I read Taking Flight with OWLs. How-ever, the information in the book might have been more easily accessible and more useful if each chapter had been assigned a structure built around spe-cific questions (this was the strategy used in Writing Centers in Context) and if the book had been developed in the context of an overriding theoretical perspective.

Balancing Enthusiasm and Skepticism

Calendar for Writing Centers Associations

Sept. 28-30: Midwest Writing Centers Association, in Feb. 16-18, 2001: Southeastern Writing Centers Association, Minneapolis, MN in Auburn, AL

Contact: either Suzanne M. Swiderski Contact: Isabelle Thompson, Auburn University at<sswiders@loras.edu> or Larry D. Harred at (thompis@groupwise1.duc.auburn.edu) and Glenda <larry.d.harred@uwrf.edu> Conference website: Conway, University of Montevallo

http://www.macalester.edu/~mwca (conwayg@montevallo.edu)

November 2-4, 2000. National Writing Centers Association March 23-24, 2001: East Central Writing Centers Associa-in conjunction with the Mid-Atlantic Writing tion, in Granville, OH Centers Association, in Baltimore, MD. Conference Contact: Cindy Johanek, English Dept., Denison

website: <http://www.english.udel.edu/wc/mawca/ University, Granville, OH 43023. Ph: 740-788-9288; nwcacon.html> e-mail johanek@denison.edu. Conference website:<http://www.denison.edu/ecwca2001>

That warm fuzzy feeling

Smarthinking.com: http://smarthinking.com

Reviewed by Holly Moe (Modesto Junior College, Modesto, CA)

“Smarthinking.com – online writing lab or jiffy editing service?”

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