I maintained a friendly and scholarly tone in my announcements and reminders to students to create interest, cultivate motivation, promote participation, and enhance student performance. Particularly, I tried to make students view reaching out via email and signing up for revision workshops as opportunities rather than liabilities — as methods to enable their success and growth rather than take up their time.

I crafted my announcements and reminders to students while being mindful of my role as a Writing Mentor and my perspective as a student. My role as a Writing Mentor presented a duty to encourage students to reach out for writing support and attend revision workshops. Meanwhile, my perspective as a student prompted me to empathize with the time constraints of students who are often preoccupied with multiple responsibilities. I dealt with my two perceived lines of obligations by offering and rationalizing writing support while being respectful of student time constraints. I ended every announcement I sent with an invitation to request writing support from either me or the course instructor — which was a way to ensure that students felt welcome to ask clarifying questions about assignments and request additional feedback on their writing. Meanwhile, I crafted announcements to specifically promote upcoming revision workshops and used a clear subject line, a compassionate message, a link to sign up for a particular revision workshop, a list of the dates and times, and notes to limit any confusion. When students signed up for revision workshops, I would send them a message regardless of modality (synchronous or asynchronous) to ensure they knew I was aware they signed up and that they should expect feedback from me. Throughout my experience as a Writing Mentor, I merged my friendliness and my scholarliness to help students view me as a peer and a tutor and, ultimately, a reliable form of writing support. My mentoring approach and practices were aligned to create interest, cultivate and sustain motivation, promote participation, and enhance student performance.

Although students in the online ENG 102: First-Year Composition course were hesitant to seek writing support, I used thoughtful strategies to ensure that students felt supported throughout the course.