Monday, July 7, 2008

Night Watch

Back to work: after last week's vacation in southern Pennsylvania, I've returned to the summer work regimen, earlier today holding five consultation hours in the Writing Center. It's just the second week of the Summer II session, so the scene was still. Two high school seniors-to-be came through mid-day working on one-page summaries for a Summer Bridge course they are taking on campus.

Now, again tonight I'm on the clock with a consulting experiment using iChat. Our Writing Center is pushing for a couple of online options by the fall. I'm on board with testing them out and fine-tuning them before the fall semester. Two-and-a-half hours on hand for drop-in IMing. Temporarily this is aimed at lending support to SU writing courses taught in Manhattan this term. Within a week or so, the IM consultations will be scheduled in advance, so the timing will be somewhat more structured. I'm on until 11:30 p.m., so while it is quiet, why not blog?

The other online offering through the Writing Center is asynchronous. Students complete a form and submit a work-in-progress to a list of consultants who respond in rotations. I responded to one last week while in PA. I have many more apprehensions about drop-off consultations, largely because the threshold for engagement drops away for the student (some have called this the dry cleaning model of WC work). The consultant addresses the student's questions or concerns with due diligence, but the dialogue is scaled way back. There is no conversation, usually, just more 'sending' an hour's worth of comments into the abyss.

I'm sure I will have more to say about how it goes in the weeks to come. My appointment runs another five weeks, two weeks longer than my other summer stints teaching an online intro to the humanities course and guiding four new online instructors through their first terms teaching via computer alone.