Online Tutoring and Student Success in Developmental Writing Courses.

This article examines the relationship between the use of online tutoring sessions and student success in developmental writing courses. The results suggest a statistically significant difference between the success rates, as measured by course grades, of those students who use the tutoring service and those who do not, thus suggesting the effectiveness of this service. Introduction Kapiolani Community College is one of seven state-funded community colleges in the eleven-campus University of Hawaii system. Kapiolani is an urban campus located in Honolulu, a city rich in its diversity while also being one of the most expensive places to live in the country. The high cost of living coupled with a decrease in funding to the state's educational institutions since the late 1990s (Abou-Sayf, 2006) compels most students to hold at least one job, even those carrying a full load of courses. Included in this group are many single parents who must arrange for childcare in order to be able to attend class. All these factors limit access to face-to-face tutoring support. Successful face-to-face tutoring requires an array of sophisticated technical and interpersonal skills in order to build students' confidence while providing an honest critique of the work. Because of funding limitations, tutoring centers like our own operate on restricted budgets and, consequently, are open only during limited times, further discouraging the efforts of students who need tutoring. To address these issues, Kapiolani Community College explored the use of on-line tutoring to supplement the face-to-face tutoring offered at the college, with several companies including BrainFuse, eLuminate, eSylvan, and Smarthinking. However, Smarthinking was, according to a sales representative, the only company to offer asynchronous writing tutoring. Asynchronous tutoring allows the students to submit drafts of essays at their convenience. Because of these advantages, Kapiolani purchased a block of asynchronous online tutoring hours from Smarthinking. Smarthinking service is offered in various pricing options, and the colleges elected to purchase the service that costs $30 per hour. For each asynchronous reading of a student essay, Smarthinking deducts 35 minutes from the purchased hours. This service was used from Spring 2003 to Spring 2005 in English 22 Beginning Composition, a writing course that leads directly to college level composition. The on-line tutoring program was piloted in Spring 2003 by four instructors in a limited number of Eng 22 sections. During subsequent semesters as many as six instructors used the service in an average of 10 sections of English 22. Students access the on-line tutoring service by creating an account which identifies their home campus, course level and instructor. For each essay submitted, the students cut-and-paste or summarize the instructor 's directions for each assignment. They then select two areas on which they would like the tutor to focus from a list of nine available options. Options include grammar/mechanics, organization, content development, introduction/conclusion, main idea/thesis, word choice, use of resources, transitions and sentence structure. Students upload their essay which is then sent to a tutor. Students may submit the paper at any time. The essays are generally returned to the student within 24 hours with focused comments in the areas the student has selected. Occasionally the tutor will comment on an area other than those identified by the student. In addition to an assignment-specific narrative commentary sheet that precedes the returned essay, the tutors also embed comments within the essay drafts. Tutors usually hold a Master's or Ph.D. in English or Rhetoric and Composition. The skill, experience and educational level required of the tutors allows them to provide directive comments that enable students to recognize error patterns and challenges in organization or coherence. …