Ready (or Not) for Your Close Up?: Consultant Experiences with Video-Recording Tutorials

Alumni Boardroom

What can our consultants learn from video-recording and reviewing their sessions with writers? What anxieties and concerns will they bring with them to the experience, and how will their mindset shape both the assessment experience and culture of the writing center? This presentation will explore answers to these questions by presenting lessons from a two-year, IRB-approved assessment project that prompted student-consultants to record writing center appointments, and then review and self-assess their consulting strategies. We will share the results of surveys and reflections completed by consultants about their experience with capturing the tutoring process on film, giving particular consideration to consultants’ reported emotional experience, beliefs about the reliability of recordings as an accurate reflection of a “normal” session, and perspectives on what can be learned from this practice. Finally, we will engage audience members in a consideration of the challenges and benefits of recording appointments for review and assessment. In this facilitated discussion, we will offer our insights on navigating consultant reactions and, more particularly, on using the assessment practice to cultivate a culture of discovery in the writing center.