As COVID-19 claims more lives and confines many of us to our homes, employers furlough or lay off more workers, thus putting more strain on the already straining economy. Meanwhile, a new generation characterized by online work and education is born: Generation Zoom. This global pandemic has brought to light issues of unequal access to healthcare, internet, technology, nutrition, and learning-conducive home environments in the United States, all pointing angrily at the undeniable fact that we were wholly unprepared to fight this virus. As businesses around the country go bankrupt and hundreds of thousands of people file for unemployment daily, another business has been fighting to keep its metaphorical head above the floodwaters: higher education. For small, private liberal arts schools with hefty price tags like the University of Richmond, those characteristics which attract students, such as opportunities for personal relationships with professors and personalized academic tutoring, are threatened by online education. With the threat of another online semester in the fall of 2020 looming, one question becomes apparent: how will these schools continue to provide the quality of education worth upwards of $70k a year through remote education? As a rising senior at UR, and a Writing Consultant, it seems to me that one answer lies in student-led services, such as The Writing Center, which may serve as life lines to a population of students grasping for the remnants of what made them come to UR in the first place.

With the transition to online learning, though, The Writing Center and its Consultants may be some of the first exposed to the pitfalls which come with online learning, such as decreases in motivation and engagement in coursework. In particular, unprepared incoming students coupled with unprepared professors, and the decreases in motivation and interest in class work that will plague most students- but especially upperclassmen- may be some of the most prolific challenges to effective online writing collaboration. It will be through the recognition of and preparation for these issues that UR's Writing Center will be able to tutor students most effectively and efficiently online.

For years, higher education- for this paper’s purposes, public and private undergraduate institutions- has been heading toward what Dr. Bryan Alexander, an internationally known futurist, researcher, writer, and speaker studying technology and education, refers to as a downhill slide from peak higher education in the US (Alexander “Peak Education”). If Alexander is right, and higher education has already peaked- meaning that it cannot progress upwards any longer- and has since been precariously balancing on the edge of a downhill slide, then the current COVID-19 pandemic will only exacerbate the fall. This moment in higher education, characterized by drops in enrollments, cuts to state support of public institutions, decreases in faculty-led research, and changes to the average family’s finances, is seemingly dwarfed by what higher education faces from COVID-19 (Alexander “Peak Education”).

Schools such as UR face threats to their endowments, declines in enrollment, loss in revenue, and requests for partial or total refunds of room and board or tuition, among others (Alexander “COVID-19 vs. Higher Ed”). As the overall economy tanks and millions of workers are fired or furloughed, families will undoubtedly prioritize fulfilling basic needs as opposed to frivolous items. In the same way that a family may choose to throw a meal together at home instead of spending money on takeout, students may choose “a state school over a research institute, community college instead of state school, online school instead of liberal arts school” (Alexander “COVID-19 vs. Higher Ed”). For UR, a school that depends on students choosing a small, private liberal arts education over less expensive, more affordable options, this may seriously dampen enrollment and revenue for the coming academic year. Along the same lines, changes to a family’s employment and income will change that family’s financial aid profile, and since UR is dedicated to providing 100% of demonstrated financial need, this means that UR may need to provide more financial aid to its students than in previous years. The American Council on Education predicted a 15% drop in college enrollment for the next academic year, including “25% for international students from countries like China who often pay full tuition, helping universities meet their budgets and afford financial aid for Americans” (Hartocollis). UR similarly relies on its approximate 11% of international students- many of whom are from China- to help provide funds for other students’ financial aid and other services. Given the extent of the pandemic, many international students may not want- or may not be able- to return to school for the coming semester.

In my experience as a student at Richmond, people are drawn to UR because of its small class sizes, opportunities to make personal relationships with professors, research with faculty, academic rigor, and access to student-led services such as The Writing Center, which help promote UR’s atmosphere of collaboration-not-competition. In this difficult, unprecedented time of online learning, our Writing Center- and its apparent ability to transition to online smoothly, given the tools of modern technology- may be one of the simplest ways to maintain UR’s claim to personal academic services. But, in turn, The Writing Center may be one of the clearest ways to observe the decreases in motivation and focus, growing disinterest in course work, and heightened procrastination of students that will accompany another semester of online learning. One way that this may become extremely evident is through consultants’ work with first-year students.

In his book The Transition to College Writing, Keith Hjortshoj outlines the ways in which incoming undergraduate students may struggle in their first year of higher education (3). A long standing grievance of college professors is that their incoming students are unprepared for the types of college-level reading, thinking, learning, and writing that are required in their classes (Hjortshoj 3). This unpreparedness on the parts of incoming students may be due to their failure to recognize college as a “dramatic turning point in learning”, where they “often approach their studies as if they were attending a mythical college or university: the kind of school for which they are already prepared to succeed, without substantial changes” (Hjortshoj 6-7). Students are not the only ones at fault, however, because in the same way that they imagine what Hjortshoj calls a "mythical" college or university, while “professors often imagine mythical high schools as the logical extensions of everything students should have learned in preparation for college work” (9). Under normal circumstances, this creates a grave misunderstanding between incoming students and professors, where students do not understand the changes they have to make in order to succeed in college, and professors do not understand what incoming students already know and what they need to be taught. Under the current circumstances of the global COVID-19 pandemic, where most high schools have also transitioned to online learning for the rest of the year- resulting in probable decreased quality of education- this gap between students and professors will grow.

In The Writing Center, Consultants are trained to work with first-year students to help them become acclimated to college-level writing. At UR, most, if not all, first-year seminar courses require their students to utilize The Writing Center or have embedded Consultants in the section, in an attempt to remedy the problem of unpreparedness. If the fall semester continues online, Consultants will have to devote more attention than ever to helping first-year students adapt: incoming students will have even less of an idea as to what to expect for their firsts semester in college, and professors will similarly have difficulties communicating their expectations when they are trying to navigate online teaching. As Writing Consultants, we must expect an influx of panicked, confused students faced with writing what may be their first 1,000+ word paper, and we must take care to provide the same organic, personal consultations in online formats that we would use in face-to-face conferences. Some of these techniques for online tutoring, outlined in the essay “Protocols and Process in Online Tutoring” by George Cooper, Kara Bui, and Linda Riker, include setting the right tone with introductory remarks, promoting dialogue in diagnostic and instructional comments, and limiting the focus on grammar and mechanics (130-135). Many of these are the same as what would be expected during a normal writing conference, but they are especially important when translated to an online context. By aiming to establish a friendly yet constructive relationship with the writer, some of the more awkward aspects of online platforms in general can be assuaged, and the writer will hopefully feel more comfortable moving forward with the consultation.

Another challenge that many Writing Consultants may face in the event of an online fall 2020 semester is the decrease in motivation and engagement in course work that returning sophomores, juniors, and especially seniors will very likely experience. This group of returning students differs from the challenges presented by incoming students because returning students have one or more “normal” semesters to compare the online learning experience to. In his essay “A Balancing Act of Efficiency and Exploration”, Pavel Zemliansky writes that “even the most creative and enthusiastic writers have moments when they just wish they could finish a piece of writing and forget about it”, and that “having observed upper-division students for several years now, I have noticed that this attitude is more common among them than it is for first-year students” (85). According to Zemliansky, when it comes to tutoring “students in major classes”, often a “different approach than the one tutors might use for first-year students [is required] because they tend to see their writing assignments as only marginally necessary” (85). With online classes, this scenario of the uninterested, disengaged upper-level student is ever-more likely: students who already may have viewed writing assignments as only ‘marginally necessary’ might now view them as almost completely irrelevant, especially during a global pandemic. Moreover, this drive to simply finish a writing assignment for the sake of finishing it, rather than for the sake of learning, will be much more apparent- even in students who are not upper-level and who are not in major classes.

At UR, Writing Consultants are trained work with students who are task-completion driven, and Zemliansky offers advice on this front: “the ultimate challenge for writing center tutors working with writers in upper-division classes…is to prepare students to use writing as a means of learning and to face a variety of writing situations on their own” (90). To this end, Consultants must remember the advice offered by Cooper, Bui, & Riker in regard to protocols of online tutoring, taking special care to refrain from focusing a conference on grammar and mechanics (130-135). In this way, and by establishing a relationship with the writer where there is a constructive exchange of dialogue as opposed to the Consultant offering direct solutions to issues with the writing, the Consultant may be able to help the writer think differently about their assignment.

With the widespread availability of technology, the actual transition of writing conferences to online platforms seems rather straightforward. At UR, Writing Consultants could hold online office hours on Zoom to simulate when they would physically be in the Writing Center under normal circumstances. In a conference such as this, writers could use the “share screen” feature on Zoom to show the Consultant their work and proceed with an otherwise normal conference. Additionally, writers could send Consultants their papers ahead of time, giving the Consultant time to look over it and make a list of priorities for revision, and designate a time to meet on Zoom. In the event that a writer would prefer a non-video conference, the Consultant and the writer could work together on a collaborative platform such as Google Docs to exchange ideas and embed comments in the writing. So, even in the event of another online semester, certain systems and processes could certainly be set up to establish some sense of normalcy in the Writing Center, if nowhere else.

In this ongoing, complex conversation as to how schools could continue to offer services and quality of education worth prices upwards of $70k a year, it is necessary to establish several facts: that online education is not, and never will be, equal to in-person education, that some- if not most- students will have difficulty maintaining focus, motivation, and interest in courses during an online semester, and that Writing Consultants themselves are not immune from the difficulties described in this paper. As a rising senior, and as a Consultant, I know that I will be able to relate to the hundreds of other students who are experiencing motivation deficits during online school. We are in unprecedented times, and we must treat them as such: even by acknowledging and preparing for unprepared incoming students and unmotivated upperclassmen at the Writing Center, we must all remember that flexibility and graciousness will be perhaps more useful during this time than even practical advice as to the protocols of online tutoring. We are no longer just college students at UR- we are Generation ZoomURs- and we will navigate this together.

Works Cited

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

Alexander, Bryan. “Peak Education 2013.” Bryan Alexander, 18 Sept. 2013. https://bryanalexander.org/uncategorized/peak-education-2013/

Cooper, George, Kara Bui, and Linda Riker. “Protocols and Process in Online Tutoring.” A Tutor's Guide: Helping Writers One to One , Edited by Ben Rafoth, 2nd Ed., Boynton/Cook Publishers, 2005, pp. 129-139.

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

Hjortshoj, Keith. Transition to College Writing. 2nd Ed., Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2009

Zemliansky, Pavel. “A Balancing Act of Efficiency and Exploration: Tutoring Writers in Advanced Classes.” A Tutor's Guide: Helping Writers One to One , Edited by Ben Rafoth, 2nd Ed., Boynton/Cook Publishers, 2005, pp. 85–97.