 . . . June 1995 flies with Moos and Muds Computers are increasing the effectiveness of student peer tutors Peer Instruction is one of the most effective recent innovations in higher education. At Harvard, Physics Prof. Eric Mazur uses interactive computing during his lectures to immediately test students on how well they understand a concept he's just introduced. Each student answers a question on his or her hand-held computer. Those who catch on first are designated peer instructors. Mazur pauses while the peer instructors explain the concept to students sitting around them. Then the lecture proceeds.
University of Wisconsin chemistry Prof. Arthur Ellis adapted Mazur's technique and says it "makes the classroom much more lively."
Peer instruction and tutoring has operated at Michigan for several years in various guises in many departments. One such program is the decade-old peer tutoring-program of the English Composition Board's Writing Workshop. Students learn to tutor in a first-semester seminar, then receive credit for tutoring fellow students who want help in writing research papers.
Karen Sabgir, a 1995 graduate from Worthington, Ohio, describes the program and its adoption of new information technology from the student-tutor's point of view in the stories that follow.
By Karen Sabgir
Students, with their hands clutched to their heads, staring at the blinking cursor in front of them, can't help but notice that theirs are among the few quiet keyboards in a room of about 500 beaming computer screens.
When I first started tutoring two years ago, the thought of trying to help a desperate writer frightened me. All the details--grammar rules, thesis statements and general typos--are just that, details. I was scared of giving wrong advice or, worse, ruining someone's grade.
Some students are unsure of the kind of help their papers need. Their teachers may have told them they have grammar problems, so they tell me to check only their grammar when that is unfortunately the strongest part of their paper. The grammar-check request is fairly common, but so is the coherence-check, "Tell me if it flows; I just want to know if it makes sense," I'm told, as I stare down at a paper that has no noun-verb agreement.
Another popular plea (usually made with a deadline-tomorrow paper of 10 pages or more) is: "Can you tell me if I answered the question?" That's a sign of a severe structural problem, nine times out of 10.
Before becoming English Composition Board (ECB) peer tutors, students must complete an intensive training course, ECB 300. The next semester, in ECB 301, students begin tutoring on-site for academic credit. After they complete ECB 301, tutors are certified and may earn $8 an hour. (Peer tutoring is a small fraction of ECB services, which also include assessing all students' writing, teaching practicum classes and administering upper-level writing requirements.)
ECB director Bill Condon is pleased with the positive feedback from students who seek help from peer tutors in ECB's Writing Workshop. The evening hours (usually 7-11 p.m.), convenient locations (Angell Hall, North Campus and various residential halls) and lack of professional authority and intimidation are special to peer tutoring and a big draw for students who want assistance. The number of conferences increased from 290 during the 1991-92 school year to 727 during the 1993-94 school year.
Why have peer tutors? "There are two reasons," Condon says. "The first and probably main one follows the old adage that the best way to learn something is to teach it. It's an enormous benefit to the tutors, themselves. Complementing that value, the peer tutors provide a service that is accessible to students at times and places the students are writing, and some students prefer to go to a trained peer rather than to one of our faculty members. So peer tutors accomplish things that the Workshop couldn't do without them."
Student interest in becoming a peer tutor has grown with the demand. When the program started, only one section of ECB 300 was offered a year; then, after a couple of years, one section per semester. Starting next winter term, two sections will be offered each semester. The paid student tutors jumped from 16 tutors to 27 last winter; this winter, the number of tutors will double.
Hatching the OWL Then the 20 of us split into groups by our majors and discussed characteristics of writing from our disciplines-English, political science, archaeology, psychology, marketing, kinesiology and chemistry in my sermnar.
We wrote papers about the genres of writing and distributed drafts around die class. Like amateur beauticians, we all had dummies on which to practice; models who could stand it if we were too modest or used too much force.
We began with real paper in our hands and interacted with each other face-to-face, but soon our instructor, Barbara Monroe, introduced us to interacting in cyberspace. Monroe united us on our own computer "virtual conference," and we began to comment without looking anyone in the eye. Soon we were referring to face-to-face contact as "f2f."
We downloaded our papers and e-mailed them to each other. I would pull up a copy of a classmate's paper on my screen, read it and e-mail my comments back for him to pick up at his leisure. At the same time, I was receiving messages from members of the seminar with general comments and specific questions about my own paper. All of this served as an incubation period for the OWL—the On-line Writing Lab—when it was piloted last fall. Pilot clients "flew" OWL by simply sending an e-mail message to owl@umich.edu, requesting a cybertutor's suggestions on papers-in-progress. Then last winter, two tutors, Jonas Kaplan and Brian Abrams, along with their instructor, Becky Rickly. put the OWL on the World Wide Web, where it can be reached at http://www.lsa.umich.edu/swc/help/owl.html. This fall, the OWL officially takes flight, offering its services campuswide on both e-mail and the Web.
Students call send their papers to the OWL at any time, along with a brief description of the assignment and of the help they seek. OWL, tutors read client requests daily, guaranteeing a response within 48 hours. Even though the OWL wasn't open to the public last year, usage increased beyond the pilot client group, the news spreading by of mouth.
Virtual conferences are conducive to hectic schedules because tutors have time to think about the paper before responding. Not all students and tutors like the OWL, however. Some tutors find that not being able to see a student's body language impedes the process of helping him. And adapting to entirely textual forms of communication may be a challenge for students who do not regularly use email or computer conferences. Nevertheless, judging from demand, the OWL is edging up to the popularity of the f2f peer tutor centers on campus.
Monroe does not worry that cyber-tutoring will replace f2f. "The OWL, I think, will be used for distance education," she says. For now, the distance may mean simply from a dorm room on North Campus down to Angell Hall Computing Center, where a peer tutor waits for e-mail. However, Monroe mentioned that in the near future she hopes to be using the OWL to hook up with Detroit public schools.-KS.
MOOing in the MUD But instead of fighting monsters and other forms of freestyle gaming popular among MUD users, MOO users are mainly interested in communicating rather than competing. The communication centers around an object (a MOO is a M[UD] that is Object-Oriented). The object may be a "house" whose blueprint is rendered in words rather than illustration.
As a new visitor to a MOO, you need to create a name for yourself. Use your own, find one that's gender neutral or pick the name of a random object. You read the organizers' description of the setting, including the decor, exits and entrances, smells, what other guests are present and the type of conversation that is fitting there-the "netiquette. MOOs may be a ballroom, library, bar (no age limitations or cover charge), basement or tree house.
Many MOOs require permission for entry. Media MOO, based in Massachusetts Institute of Technology's media lab, is a popular hangout for people with professional interests in media. Some of its dwellings are the Techno Rhetoricians' Bar & Grill, Pocket Fluff and Lint, and the Ethnographers' Tent.
MOOs can get bogged down with gossip and chatter, but they do provide a forum for live discussions in any field, building international lines of communication for both academics and novices.
While MOOs cover numerous academic areas, from biology and astronomy to post-modern culture, peer tutors have discovered other MOOs and conferences across the Internet where they can hold virtual and real-time conversations about their work.
ECB Lecturer Becky Rickly, who helped Michigan students make alliances with other universities, directed peer tutors to various sites, including the Writery in the Daedalus MOO, where one evening we spoke with peer tutors and directors of peer tutoring programs nationwide.
In a two-hour session we debated the advantages and disadvantages of on-line tutoring; we described our successes and our traumas with different kinds of students, and we also had a few moments to kick back and enjoy an icy-cold virtual drink.
Sessions at the Writery and other computer conferences, extensive use of the OWL, plus brief jaunts through the World Wide Web, have enabled many of Michigan's peer tutors to take advantage of as well as acclimate themselves to the Internet-a daily-expanding means and resource to people and information across the world.--KS.
For more news on the OWL and interactive writing MOOs, contact the Web address in the OWL story above, or Barbara Monroe at bjmonroe@umich.edu or Becky Rickly at barthes@umich.edu. For general campus computing information, write to the Information Technology Digest, 535 W. William, Ann Arbor, MI 48103-4943.
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The Angell Hall Computing Center where I worked is open 24 hours a day, a great resource for students doing research or writing papers. But it still presents a daunting and sometimes disabling atmosphere at 9 p.m. the night before a paper is due.
Papers, even with topics like the Mongolian empire or an hypothesis for removing the thorax from a fly, are personal. Anytime you transfer something from your head to a sheet of paper, something personal latches on and is unveiled for all the world to laugh at or be confused by, whichever is your greater fear.
