Presentation/Proposal Title
Look out Below!: The Effectiveness of Email Comments
Type of Presentation/Proposal
Individual Presentation or Paper
Start Date
5-4-2019 11:00 AM
End Date
5-4-2019 12:00 PM
Keywords
Email comments, Asynchronous Email Tutoring, Draft improvement, Comment effectiveness, Revision Effectiveness
Description
One goal of writing centers is to improve student writing, but we often don’t have a paper trail of the results of a session. However, email tutoring allows a record of first drafts, comments, and revisions if a student resubmits their paper. Our research is designed to tap into the potential of this record to study the overall effectiveness of email comments. In this presentation, we will discuss our work examining asynchronous email tutoring and how we determined whether tutor comments on papers emailed to our writing center were effective.
In our research, we utilized papers that were submitted twice to the Writing Center, categorizing the tutor comments made on the first draft and the respective changes on the second draft using the taxonomy created by Witte and Faigley (1981). We used the taxonomy and “improvement ratio” of Stay (1983) to gauge draft improvement: how do writers respond to tutors’ comments and do papers improve overall? By examining the changes made (or not made), we can determine the comments’ effectiveness and which tutoring strategies elicit effective revisions.
Our research is especially relevant to any writing center engaged in email (and face-to-face) conferencing. Ideally our study can educate writing center directors and tutors and encourage them to implement our findings in their centers, allowing writers to take flight. We know you have many options when it comes to conferences today and so we thank you for soaring with us! Have an elevated day!
Look out Below!: The Effectiveness of Email Comments
Alumni Boardroom
One goal of writing centers is to improve student writing, but we often don’t have a paper trail of the results of a session. However, email tutoring allows a record of first drafts, comments, and revisions if a student resubmits their paper. Our research is designed to tap into the potential of this record to study the overall effectiveness of email comments. In this presentation, we will discuss our work examining asynchronous email tutoring and how we determined whether tutor comments on papers emailed to our writing center were effective.
In our research, we utilized papers that were submitted twice to the Writing Center, categorizing the tutor comments made on the first draft and the respective changes on the second draft using the taxonomy created by Witte and Faigley (1981). We used the taxonomy and “improvement ratio” of Stay (1983) to gauge draft improvement: how do writers respond to tutors’ comments and do papers improve overall? By examining the changes made (or not made), we can determine the comments’ effectiveness and which tutoring strategies elicit effective revisions.
Our research is especially relevant to any writing center engaged in email (and face-to-face) conferencing. Ideally our study can educate writing center directors and tutors and encourage them to implement our findings in their centers, allowing writers to take flight. We know you have many options when it comes to conferences today and so we thank you for soaring with us! Have an elevated day!
