COVID-19 struck an unsuspecting victim: The University of Richmond, and higher education more generally. The spring 2020 semester was cut short, forcing us to transition to remote learning. Students accustomed with in-person instruction and human interaction have been forced to adapt to a new reality without these features. We no longer live with each other, learn with each other, and share experiences with each other. Instead, our college experience has been reduced to a screen. This has eliminated in-person interactions between writers and Writing Consultants. The tutor has become, in a way, an abstraction. She’s no longer flesh; nor is she the person you interacted with at The Writing Center. Rather, she’s an email, a message, an image. And now we face the real possibility of another semester under the same conditions. So, as Writing Consultants, we are forced to answer a pertinent question: which methods will be most effective at maintaining the traditional value of a writing center? I answer the question by proposing that we utilize digital conferences, use Google Docs for complementary commentary, and maintain our traditional standards as much as possible. These methods are not perfect—as I hope to make evident. But they’ll help us stay true to our goal of producing “better writers, not better writing,” as Anna Kendall quotes Stephen M. North (2).

Digital conferences can act as a substitute for in-person conferences. Our lectures have been moved online, and similarly, I believe our conferences with writers can be moved online. There are several platforms available, but Zoom has largely treated us well. All UR students now have a Zoom account and some familiarity with the platform, making for a seamless transition to online conferencing. The writer can set up an appointment with the tutor and join the Zoom meeting with ease. Once in the meeting, he will encounter a tutor he can speak with as if they shared a room.

These conferences will continue to provide the value of in-person conferences. These conferences allow for a friendly, collaborative environment essential to the writing process. This is because when we write, our ideas make perfect sense to us—we are the ones writing them after all. But if we fail to organize our ideas for others to understand, we fail as writers. Alice Trupe draws out this idea well in her article “Organizing Ideas.” She uses the example of her friend’s home (98). It’s clearly organized, and everything follows a logical pattern. An outsider could understand the layout. Trupe’s office, on the other hand, has the outward appearance of disorganization. Visitors are unable to locate items and uncover the underlying system. But Trupe, the organizer of such ostensible chaos, has no trouble doing so. She understands how everything is organized even though it may look sloppy to others. This describes writing. Although the organization of our ideas is perfectly obvious to us, we must make it perfectly obvious to readers. A tutoring session with a writer can help weed out his ideas and shift his focus from “What do I want to say?” to “What does the reader need to know?” This is done by asking open-ended questions about the writer’s work, which, in turn, hopefully fosters a curiosity within the writer himself to ask his own reader-based questions. This is why George Cooper et al., identify communication during tutoring sessions as “necessary for the writer’s transition into the written world [from the oral world]” (pg. 129). By stating their goals orally and asking reader-based questions, writers can lay out their ideas effectively.

Admittedly, though, digital conferences do not provide the full value of in-person conferences. Body language is not perfectly captured in a video call, which eliminates an important element of friendly and collaborative communication. When we talk to each other, we don’t only communicate using words; we also use our bodies. For example, our posture, the amount of space we take up, whether we lean in or not, affirmative movements, and the position of our arms and hands all have the potential to create a friendly environment. But these are not fully captured by cameras. We only see faces, and only sometimes get to see hands and postures.

Another problem that digital conferences face is conflicting time zones. Many of us at the University of Richmond, if not most of us, live according to Eastern Standard time. But it’s important to remember that not all of our students do. Students come from all over the country and all over the world. If we set up an appointment at 9:00 AM Eastern Standard, we’re setting up an appointment at 6:00 AM Pacific Daylight. Even more troubling, we’d likely be setting up an appointment at a drastically different time for an international student. This is because morning for me could be night for someone located elsewhere.

Differing time zones is not a deal-breaker though; it just takes more care. I am not familiar with the demographics of UR’s Writing Center, but if possible, we could set up a system to match international tutors with international writers—and tutors on the West Coast with writers on the West Coast. If this is not possible, we can still try to line up time zones as well as we can. For example, it’ll be easier—though not easy—for a tutor in California to conduct a conference with a writer in China, than for a tutor in Virginia to do so. Moreover, we could also match night owls comfortable working late, such as myself, with writers located on the opposite end of the globe.

These digital conferences can be complemented by commentary provided through Google Docs. Students can either write their papers on the service, or upload them there, and then share them with the tutor. It’s an intuitive platform that is easy to learn, and tutors—or at least our cohort—already have experience using the system to provide comments on the work of their peers and also receive comments on their own work. This will make for an easy adoption because tutors will not need to learn a new system, and writers with no previous experience of Google Docs can be guided by their tutors.

Fortunately, I believe that we don’t lose any value transitioning to this system of commentary. This is because comments on a screen are just as good as comments on paper. Some people indeed prefer to read physical copies, such as myself, but the only thing lost in the transition is convenience. I prefer physical books over e-books because I find them more convenient, but I know they contain the same content. Additionally, whereas many students are not accustomed to reading e-books, almost all are already accustomed to reading papers online, since they write, revise, and edit using an online word processor. As such, the commentary writers receive will not diminish in quality. If anything, our experiment with online commentary will be met with joy. Students, already used to writing papers online, will appreciate comments on their papers being online. They also won’t have to fear losing their physical copies because their comments will be saved to the cloud. This may mean a permanent transition to online commentary.

Importantly, as we undergo these transitions, we must maintain our standards as Writing Consultants. I see these as collaboration, hospitality, and communication and coordination with professors. These standards sustain The Writing Center, and I have faith that we will maintain them. If we are to fail, our Writing Center would become a fraudulent version of itself. College writers in need of help to become better writers would find nowhere to go. But since I have already addressed maintaining collaboration above (using digital conferences complemented by online commentary), I turn my focus to hospitality and communication and coordination with professors.

We can maintain hospitality by setting a welcoming tone in our online communication. This should be done out the outset via email, (Cooper et al. 130-131). Our first encounter with the writer sets up the tone for all future encounters. So we must be friendly in our greeting and even somewhat informal. This establishes a friendly environment, and it creates a peer relationship that facilitates collaboration. If the writer sees our questions, comments, and feedback as friendly, she’ll be more receptive to constructive criticism. Furthermore, another tactic explained by Cooper et al., that we can employ to maintain hospitality is providing a final summation that creates closure and boosts the writer’s confidence (pg. 135). Confident about her writing progress, the student will not only become better adept at producing a good piece of writing, but she'll also become a better writer in the long-term. This is because a proper level of confidence enhances your performance. When you are more confident in your ability, you take more risks and find the experience more enjoyable.

Fortunately, once we have adjusted to these new forms of hospitality and collaboration, coordination and communication with professors will not be a difficult task. Since we are already used to communicating with professors online, as we have made the transition to remote learning, I think maintaining communication with professors will be easy, as well as coordinating with them to understand the details of their assignments and what they are looking for. As always, we can use email. And like with our tutees, we can video chat professors if need be.

COVID-19 began as a slow-motion and distant event for higher education, then it accelerated downhill toward us. We escaped the avalanche, barely, by remote learning. Its impact will linger and accelerate already existent trends in America. Budgets will be cut, as enrollment and charitable donations decline, endangering less fortunate institutions that lack UR’s substantial endowment (Alexander 2020). The development of a vaccine for COVID-19 will go into 2021, and possibly even 2022, meaning we won’t return to full normal anytime soon. If schools reopen, we can expect extra precautionary measures, such as masks and having every other desk empty. Extra-curricular events from dining, to sports, to fitness, to socializing will suffer. And if they don’t reopen and we are forced to complete yet another semester online, The Writing Center must adapt to continue providing effective tutoring—as it has thus far. We can do this by adopting digital conferences, using Google Docs for complementary commentary, and maintaining our standards. A large reason for people coming to UR, and other similar liberal arts colleges, is personal connections with professors and small class sizes. But this feature is under threat, and its value is being reassessed. Incoming students will vote with their enrollment, and we, as Consultants, will adapt to demand.

Works Cited:

Alexander, B. “COVID-19 Versus Higher Ed: The Downhill Slide Becomes and Avalanche,” (March 2020). Accessed online at: https://bryanalexander.org/future-of-education/covid-versus-higher-ed-the-downhill-slide-becomes-an-avalanche/

Cooper, G. et al. "Protocols & Process in Online Tutoring,” in A Tutor’s Guide, ed. Ben Rafoth (2005): 129-139.

Kendall, A. "The Assignment Sheet Mystery." Writing Lab Newsletter 33.1 (Sept. 2008): 1-5.

Trupe, A. "Organizing Ideas: Focus is Key,” in A Tutor’s Guide, ed. Ben Rafoth (2005): 98-106.