Context Describe the course, class, or other teaching context in which you conducted your project. I designed a survey to be distributed through Vanderbilt's Writing Studio. Who were the students in the course? Why were they taking the course? The Writing Studio serves primarily undergraduate students at Vanderbilt. The students use the Writing Studio on a voluntary basis to receive help on any kind of writing at any stage in the writing process. What learning goals did you have for the students? I conceived of this project as an attempt to answer what SoTL classifies as a "what is?" question. I was trying to find out how Socio-Economic Status and/or educational background affects students expectations for and experiences of the non-directive tutoring that forms the center of most writing center practice.

Questions The first question I asked included several statements to determine students' feelings of writing confidence and overall preparedness for college writing, using statements like: statements "I feel like I am AT LEAST as good at writing as most students at Vanderbilt" and "My high school education did a good job preparing me for college writing." For these statements, students could reply strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, or strongly disagree. I used the same format of asking students to agree or disagree with statements to measure students' experiences of the writing studio. The survey included statements like "I felt comfortable coming to the writing studio for the first time," "We accomplish what I want to in the sessions," and, "When I am confused, I feel comfortable asking questions." The survey included three open-ended questions about students' expectations for and experiences of their tutoring sessions: What did you expect to have happen the first time you came to the Writing Studio? What did you want to have happen the first time you came to the Writing Studio? Describe what actually happened during your session. Although the first two questions may seem redundant, one of my colleagues pointed out that although some students may expect something very unpleasant to occur during a tutoring session, this does not mean that they want to have an unpleasant experience. In addition to these questions about writing and the Writing Studio, I asked questions to determine the students' SES, including a multiple choice question that asked them to determine their family's average annual income, and fill-in questions that asked the students to state the highest level of education their parents had received and their parents' occupations.

Gathering Evidence What sources of evidence of student learning did you collect in order to help answer your questions? I designed a survey through the program Survey Monkey. On the survey, I asked ranking questions that asked students to self-report on their writing confidence and their SES, I also asked open-ended questions about what they wanted and expected from the Writing Studio, as well as a question about what their experience at the studio was like. How did you collect these sources of evidence? I used the Writing Studio email list to send an email asking students to participate in the survey, and included a link to the surcey at the bottom of the email. The survey was both voluntary and anonymous. What did you hope to learn from these sources of evidence? I hoped to see whether or not there was correspondance between SES and expectations for and experiences of the Writing Studio. I also used the writing confidence question as a baseline to see how students' feelings about themselves as writers measured against both their SES and their feelings about the Writing Studio.

Findings How did you analyze the evidence of student learning that you collected? Because it was somewhat difficult to decipher how educational levels and occupations mapped onto SES, I ended up dividing students into the four income brackets from the mutliple choice questions. I then looked at the ways writing confidence and responses to tutoring mapped onto SES. From there, I decided to focus on students whose expectations and/or wants were not met by the Writing Studio to see whether this corresponded to the directive/non-directive split. What answers to your questions of inquiry emerged from your analysis? Support your answers with samples of student work, if possible. The first question I asked included several statements to determine students' feelings of writing confidence and overall preparedness for college writing. For these statements, students could reply strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, or strongly disagree. Although students in all groups expressed concerns about their writing, some patterns emerged. Unsurprisingly, the students' confidence increased in relationship to increased income levels. For example, the percentage of student who said they "strongly agreed" with the statement "I think I am a good writer" was 0 for the 30 or less bracket, 14for the 31-99 bracket, 20for the 100-200 bracket, and 43for the 200 and up bracket. None of the students in the top income bracket "disagreed" or "strongly disagreed" with the statement. Also, of the 7 students in the 200 and up bracket all either "strongly agreed" or "agreed" with the statements "I feel like I am AT LEAST as good at writing as most students at Vanderbilt" and "My high school education did a good job preparing me for college writing." In the other three income brackets, responses were much more mixed. I used the same format of asking students to agree or disagree with statements to measure students' experiences of the writing studio. The survey included statements like "I felt comfortable coming to the Writing Studio for the first time," "We accomplish what I want to in the sessions," and, "When I am confused, I feel comfortable asking questions." Happily, most students seemed to have positive experiences with the Writing Studio. However, those that did not seem to have good experiences--which I largely determined by students who disagreed with the statement "We accomplish what I want to in the sessions"--did not necessarily break down in terms of economic background. However, the students in the highest SES group seemed most satisfied overall, perhaps because they were most familiar with the tutoring style. To try to understand what students wanted to accomplish in their sessions, and why this did or did not happen, I had to move to their responses to the open ended questions in the survey. I was also curious to see whether what they wanted to have happen in their sessions had any correspondence to SES. The survey included three open-ended questions about students' expectations for and experiences of their tutoring sessions: What did you expect to have happen the first time you came to the Writing Studio? What did you want to have happen the first time you came to the Writing Studio? Describe what actually happened during your session. Overall, the students who responded with a "disagree" or "strongly disagree" to the statement: "We accomplish what I want to during the sessions" were students whose stated wants and/or expectations did not match their experiences of the sessions. This is not to say that all students whose experiences did not match up to their wants and/or expectations were unhappy. Some students seemed pleasantly surprised by what occurred in their sessions, including the student who had expected "all the suggestions to be redundant," but was happy to find that the experience "was quite rewarding" and that the "suggestions were new." However, among the students who were unhappy with the difference between their expectations and their wants, they tended to criticize the tutoring they recieved as "vague" and "generic," terms that may correspond to a non-directive style. In contrast, these students said they wanted "clarity," "honesty," "concrete suggestions," and for the tutor to "tell me" what to do. These statements would seem to correspond to a more directive tutoring approach. What these statements did not reveal, however, was any real difference between unhappy students of different SES. The only students whose experiences didn't break down this way were the students in the 200,000 and up income bracket. What findings not directly related to your questions of inquiry emerged from your analysis? Support your findings with samples of student work, if possible. No matter what SES a student belonged to, the unhappy students tended to have a disjuncture between their expectations and/or wants for the session and their actual experience of the session. Given your findings, what ideas do you have for future investigations along these lines? If you were to continue this project, what would your next steps be? If I were to conduct this survey again, I might ask more questions about students' past experiences with tutoring, since this seemed to be most predictive of the kind of experience they would have at the Writing Studio.

Resources and Obstacles Who (faculty, graduate students, others) were resources and allies for your project? How were they helpful? Jen Holt, the director of the Writing Studio, helped me tremendously. She allowed me to use the Studio's email list and offered suggestions for revising the email and survey. My working group at the Center for Teaching also gave me useful feedback throughout the process. In what ways, if any, did modes of thinking or methodologies in your discipline assist you in this project? My previous experiences teaching composition and working as a tutor the Writing Studio helped me to develop questions that pinpointed various concerns that might be common among student writers. This background also helped me to do a qualitative analysis of students' responses to the open-ended questions. What were some obstacles, challenges, or difficulties in conducting your project? How did you mitigate or overcome these obstacles? I was a little bit concerned that I wouldn't get very many responses because the survey was voluntary. To mitigate this possibility, I tried to keep the survey short and my email friendly.

Looking Ahead In what ways do you expect engaging in this project to affect how you approach your teaching, research, and other scholarly activity? I think that one thing I've learned from this project is that it is important to take students seriously when they voice their educational needs. For example, while writing centers may shy away from directive instruction, some students may in fact want and need direct tutoring about grammar, organization, or other so-called "basics" that many college professors assume students have already mastered in high school. But I also think this lesson holds true beyond the immediate context of writing center work: in general, I think that when students take their role as learners seriously, and actively seek knowledge, it is our job as educators to give them this knowledge, rather than withholding it because of popular pedagogical ideas in the field. In what ways do you expect engaging in this project to affect your career choices and success? I'm not yet sure how this project will affect my career, but I do know that I will continue thinking about questions of economic equity in both writing centers and the classroom. It is my hope that this thoughtfulness about economic and educational priviledge will help me to make my classroom a place that is safe for students of all class backgrounds. In what ways do you expect engaging in this project to affect your department, school, or discipline? My hope is that this study will help tutors measure the effectiveness of a particular consultation style in a particular situation in such a way that helps consultants harmonize their approach to their students' needs. I also hope this project will increase awareness of the sensitivities students from different educational and class backgrounds may feel in respect to college writing, and that this in turn will lead tutors to be thoughtful about balancing the directive instruction students may feel they "need" with non-directive techniques that promote self-confidence in struggling writers.

This page was designed as part of the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching's Teaching Certificate program. Author: Katherine Fusco Last Updated: April 9, 2008