Palmer Vaughn is a senior tutor with the Writing Centre and majoring in English. His specialties include creative writing, literary analysis, structure and flow, thesis statements and MLA citation.
The pandemic highlighted the importance of virtual learning in writing centres across Canada as tutors were forced to adapt to digital formats. With the prevalence of virtual learning and now artificial intelligence (AI), I have begun to reflect on the efficacy of in-person learning and whether our physical presence as tutors is as important as it used to be.
Why should students take time out of their day to go to an in-person appointment when they could simply insert their questions into ChatGPT, submit work asynchronously or meet virtually from the comfort of their own home? If these methods are so convenient, why should students come to the writing centre? What do in-person appointments offer that virtual learning cannot?
In-person tutoring provides a calming presence, helps build relationships and tailors education to the individual. Because I began tutoring through virtual learning during COVID, I didn’t fully comprehend how a tutor’s physical presence impacts students’ tutoring experience.
Initially, I was coming at this whole tutoring thing from a technical perspective, thinking that my only job was to address errors — similar to AI. And the irony here is that I mechanically started writing about the importance of in-person tutoring without truly believing it myself. It was only through writing this blog that I actually started to believe.
My reflections on in-person learning made me realize that the important pieces of tutoring are even more effective face-to-face. Pieces such as tailoring the learning process, managing academic anxiety, relationship building and realizing patterns through discussion and repeated visits, are in fact a significant advantage to in-person learning. What may seem peripheral to the learning process is actually the centre of what we do best.
For students, the anxiety of essay writing is one that permeates academia and the soothing presence of a tutor who is there to help you organize your ideas and navigate the writing process can help eliminate much of the anxiety surrounding writing assignments. Tutors also prioritize students’ needs into technical and content related concerns. This helps students focus on their editorial process by providing a personalized process they can follow during subsequent review. Giving students tools to revise their own papers provides direction for the overwhelming elements of writing such as grammar, thesis and argument construction, and research.
Building relationships with students allows tutors to acknowledge growth and recognize the advancements in their work over time, to highlight students’ strengths in their work and provide the affirmation that students are on the right path. By building relationships with a tutor, students can receive advice and guidance in a way that best supports their learning.
In academia, there are myriad learning preferences, essay styles, processes and formulas. What works for one person might not work for another. To address this, tutors engage students in a peer-to-peer environment with the hope of repeated visits. This allows peer tutors to get to know their students and begin unravelling the student’s individual needs.
Many educators will praise certain writing styles, often with a heavy emphasis on outlines, but that may not be what works best for the individual. I’ve noticed tutors frequently receive student requests for assistance on issues relating to grammar or punctuation, only to discover that the student’s thesis isn’t arguable or their topic statements don’t reinforce their thesis. Often, as students, what we think is the problem isn’t actually the issue, and only through discussion and real-time tutor feedback can we begin to learn what needs improvement.
Although asynchronous tutoring can deliver line edits and written feedback, it’s missing the connections that tutors can make during discussion with their students. Unlike with AI, your tutor will identify the consistent patterns and help with repeated errors, focusing on the development of writing or the whole process, rather than the individual paper.
