As COVID-19 wreaks havoc on life as we know it, many colleges are bracing for the worst: Online classes to begin the fall semester. Although many people I’ve talked to have scoffed at the notion, futurist Bryan Alexander has other ideas. According to his article forecasting the potential effects of Covid-19, there exists very plausible realities in which the virus sticks with us through the winter, potentially even for a year after. Infrastructural and economic implications aside, online school means an online writing center, an entirely different ball game to what we’re used to.

I’m currently a freshman, which means that my experience with the current Writing Center system is limited, especially given the fact that school shut down just as I was beginning to shadow a current Writing Center employee. I do, however, have a set of experiences that I believe are equally important in times like these. I’ve lived in 3 different countries before coming to college here in America, and as such am no stranger to the online class model: I was in Thailand for the 2011 floods that forced many families to relocate, and online school had to be enacted there. While I was a high school senior in Hong Kong, I took two classes via the Global Online Academy, a predominantly American institution. Both of those classes were completely online, and I hope to use all of these experiences to inform my comments on how we can implement an online writing center as effectively as we can.

When considering online learning, there are a variety of factors to consider that essentially boil down to 2 branches: The faculty and the students. Faculty members must consider how to adapt their lesson plans and syllabi to an online environment, and there’s also the question of changing grading policy to allow for extenuating circumstances that might not be present(see: power outages, ISP weaknesses, family matters) on campus. As far as the students are concerned, the two primary factors that come to mind are adapting their study schedule to the home, which might be a less than optimal setting, and staying on top of their work in a world where physically showing up to class is no longer required. Granted, Alexander and a number of other writers warn that universities may not even open in the summer, but for this piece I will operate in the hypothetical situation in which colleges are open and online learning is the new reality.

Considering the impact of online learning on a potential online writing center, there’s a variety of impacts that the above conditions could have. I’ll start by discussing the implications for faculty members. It’s a given that professors won’t be able to teach as much information online as they would have been able to in a classroom setting, and to that effect a lot more of the burden would fall on Consultants at our Writing Center— Not that they’d have to take up the mantle of teaching everything that professors might not be able to, but simply that there would be more for them to comment on in a given paper.

Grading policy might affect this as well. UR and many other schools have elected to make their classes pass/fail for the current semester, and it’s unclear whether or not that will happen in the fall. Taking pass/fail classes might not be the best idea for students aiming to apply for graduate school, and this opens up a variety of potential situations for a Writing Consultant to deal with: Perhaps a student is taking a class less seriously because they know they’re going to opt for the passing grade instead of a letter grade, or perhaps a student is under a lot of stress because their home life is in no way conducive to academic success but they still need the letter grade because they’re looking at grad schools that require it. Ultimately, these types of cases will alter the quality of a student’s writing, and that’s something that prospective online writing centers will have to deal with, be it through longer conferences, more detailed commentary, or even altered conference format.

On the topic of students, there’s a whole other set of issues they’ll have to face in the world of online learning. Students and faculty alike will be sailing into somewhat uncharted waters, but the student carries the burden of actually having to complete their coursework in a situation that might not be optimal, where they wouldn’t have the same resources available to them that they would on campus. There are 3 types of students in particular that I want to focus on: The procrastinator, the freshman, and the international and/or ELL student.

Procrastination is a beast much, much older than online classes, but I fear that its effects will only be amplified in a world where online classes are the norm. On a personal level, I’m finding it much harder to stay on top of my work, seeing as I don’t actually have to show up to class to feel the consequences should I fail to complete it. That’s always been the motivator for me— I don’t like showing up to class, participating(or not) in discussions, and talking to the teacher all while having not done my work for that day. Self regulation, then, will have to play a big role in my own life as I move into next semester. I’m definitely not the only one who procrastinates, though, and even though I don’t do well in an online environment where others might thrive, this study outlines a potential danger for all procrastinators as online classes loom. While it found no conclusive evidence that the online format causes higher levels of procrastination, it found that procrastination is a good predictor for how students perform in an online environment, but this is not the case for on-campus learning. What this means is that even though both groups had procrastination, the online group’s results suffered much more for it than the on-campus group. The researchers chalked it up to the fact that students attending lectures two times a week are forced to spread out their work, whereas online students weren’t.

Writing Consultants will have to deal with this procrastination not only in themselves as they juggle their workload with their obligations, but will also have to deal with the potential consequences of other students’ procrastination. I touched on this earlier, but it’s easy to envision a student who is already liable to procrastinate finding themselves in a pass/fail course, and subsequently deciding to phone it in on a paper they’d otherwise commit a lot more work to. This in itself presents a unique challenge, helping someone who more than likely would prefer to have their paper written for them. Now, it’s not like this is a brand new problem: The archetype of “disinterested senior,” or something to that effect has existed forever. I predict that its scope will only be magnified under our new circumstances.

Besides procrastinators, I also predict incoming first years to face a unique set of problems as not only will they be adjusting to online school, but online college to top it off. In his book, The Transition to College Writing, Keith Hjortshoj reflects on how difficult it can be to adjust to not only college writing, but the workload and overall lifestyle changes that come with graduating high school and moving up to university. He discusses two archetypal students, the “Eduardo” and the “Marie”(3-5). Eduardo doesn’t work as hard, but is highly adaptable and finds success in college life. Marie, on the other hand, is an incredibly hard worker, but follows a set algorithm and struggles immensely with the workload and new challenges that colleges set forth. I predict that the “Maries” of the world will have an especially hard time adapting to a larger, more complex workload in the relatively nascent online form. Furthermore, the concept of a writing center might be foreign to a lot of high schools(in that many high schools might not have one), and I think it’s definitely easier to take advantage of in an on-campus setting. In fact, many first years might not be aware that they can get help from UR's Writing Center, so teachers will have to be more vigilant about advertising it in class.

Drawing from my own personal experience here, I think Hjortshoj has a point when he brings up adaptability. I found it much easier to adapt to a heavier workload because I was surrounded by people facing a similar adaptation, and it was a sort of “we’re all in this together” mentality. I’d look around and see everyone working much more than I did in high school, which in turn motivated me to work harder too. The library, while not an ideal place for me to study, is also a key thing that the home learning environment lacks, and I know that many people do their best work in the library, which will be yet another challenge that comes with the switch to online classes.

The final type of student I want to talk about is the international/ELL student. Obviously, not every international student is an English Language Learner, and not every ELL student is international, but there are challenges for both. If international students can’t return to campus for the fall, something Bryan Alexander predicts might happen, they’d have to bend their schedule around online classes in a completely different timezone. That’s the situation I was in while I lived in Hong Kong, and it definitely wasn’t easy. The switch to an online environment will be felt amongst ELL students, too. Carol Severino, Muriel Harris and Tony Silva discuss the differences in pedagogy that must be applied when assisting ELL students. Because other languages operate so differently to english, there’s often much more structural work to be done when working with these students. When I was in Hong Kong, I would often help my classmates with their essays, and I found it more valuable than normal to have a face-to-face discussion. Zoom sessions do still exist, but are much less practical and it’s harder to work without a hard copy of the essay where I can write all my notes down in the margins. This is yet another adaptation the online writing center will have to make, although Google Docs’ comment system could prove invaluable in this regard.

A final consideration to make would be the implications of the pandemic on campus life when students eventually do return to campus: Will the atmosphere be different? Will students come back with a renewed sense of vigor towards their classes, excited to be back after such a long break? Or, will the opposite happen— a sense of “jet-lag” as students try to re-adapt to normal campus life? Certainly, the online format does have its benefits, such as no commute, no need to physically show up, and less overall time spent on each end of class. Students might end up feeling the lack of these boons, and as such the return to college would be an attrition rather than a celebration. Either way, by the time it has finished wreaking havoc, COVID-19 will have left an indelible mark on college life as we know it.

While many changes will have to be made, I think that overall, the challenge of shifting our Center online is one that we’re well prepared to meet. The real burden, in my opinion, is going to be on the students and faculty who need to shift their academic world from a physical to a virtual one. To me, the success of implementing an online writing center hinges on the ease with which class itself can be conducted online, and I view The Writing Center’s success as a product thereof. It’s not always going to be easy, but provided school is in session in the fall, online classes should prove to be a successful option in lieu of physically reopening.

Works Cited

Alexander, Bryan. “COVID-19 versus Higher Ed: the Downhill Slide Becomes an Avalanche.” Bryan Alexander, 31 Mar. 2020, bryanalexander.org/future-of-education/covid-versus-higher-ed-the-downhill-slide-becomes-an-avalanche/

Burke, Lilah. “How Will Pass/Fail Affect Students' Future?” How Will Pass/Fail Affect Students' Future?, Inside Higher Ed, www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/04/13/how-will-passfail-affect-students-future.

Burns, Mary. “Procrastination In Online Learning.” ELearning Industry, 5 Nov. 2019, elearningindustry.com/procrastination-in-online-learning.

Elvers, Greg C, et al. “Procrastination in Online Courses: Performance and Attitudinal Differences.” Teaching of Psychology, vol. 30, no. 2, 2003, pp. 159–162., doi:10.1207/s15328023top3002_13.

Harris, Muriel, and Tony Silva. “Tutoring ESL Students: Issues and Options.” College Composition and Communication 44, pp. 525–536.

Hartocollis, Anemona. “After Coronavirus, Colleges Worry: Will Students Come Back?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 Apr. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/us/coronavirus-colleges-universities-admissions.html.

Hjortshoj, Keith. The Transition to College Writing. 2nd ed., 2001.

Retta, Mary. “How Colleges Are Grading Students During Coronavirus.” NPR, NPR, 10 Apr. 2020, www.npr.org/2020/04/10/830622398/how-colleges-are-grading-students-during-coronavirus.

Severino, C. “The Doodles in Context: Qualifying Claims about Contrastive Rhetoric”

The Writing Center Journal, 14.1 (Fall 1993): 44-62