This article discusses findings from semi-structured interviews with writing consultants about their affective experiences working across three different consulting modalities: in person, asynchronous, and synchronous. This study offers affect as a lens for understanding consultants’ responses to and strategies for consulting in multiple modalities and argues that by attending to affect, emotion, and disposition in consulting we can better support our consultants when they’re consulting in different modalities.

Although traditional asynchronous tutoring is associated with text-based communication, writing centers are beginning to experiment with asynchronous multimodal tutoring with the assistance of accessible and interactive multimedia technologies and instructional platforms like VoiceThread. Using a mixed-methods approach of surveys and interviews of undergraduate students at a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), this study explores the potential benefits of asynchronous multimodal tutoring beyond access and convenience: We examine why students choose to submit their papers for asynchronous multimodal feedback, and whether they perceive that the multimodal aspect of the feedback improves their understanding and enhances their connection with tutors.

This study explores the discursive practices the researcher utilizes during recurring asynchronous writing consultations to engender mutually adjusted and context-driven interactions meaningful to writers’ development during virtual tutoring. While earlier studies have critiqued asynchronous tutoring for its inability to efficiently promote the writing center philosophy, the inevitability of writing centers’ transition to online modes due to the global COVID-19 pandemic warrants that writing center scholarship rethink the effectiveness of these online spaces. This study utilizes a discourse-analytic approach to analyze textual data collected from both WCONLINE and drafts I, the tutor, worked on. Individual interviews are also collected to ascertain writers’ perception of recurring asynchronous writing consultations as conversational. Textual analysis reveals that conversations occur in recuring asynchronous writing consultations on three contextual layers: first is the opening phase; second is the dialogic phase; and third is the closing phase. Interview data also shows that participants perceive their asynchronous sessions as conversational as those sessions not only function to inform, elicit, direct, and suggest, but also promote familiar relationships and provide affirmations. The study concludes by offering recommendations on how to retool the asynchronous writing consultation as not a lesser appointment option but a different option with the same opportunity as traditional writing consultation.

What do writers do with the feedback they receive? While the answer will vary depending on the writer’s experience and the rhetorical situation, understanding what writers do can provide important information for course redesign and professional development of tutors and instructors. In this first of two manuscripts, the authors examine how first-semester, first-year writing students use responses provided via asynchronous online tutoring (AOT) in revising their assignments. Our primary research question was: What was happening in—and after—those tutorials? We addressed this question by a process of narrowing and refining of data analysis toward increasingly precise inferences as we progressed from automated to coded analysis, which culminated in examining the drafts submitted for tutoring, tutor feedback, and the subsequent assignments submitted for evaluation in the students’ FYW courses. In parallel, we describe the writing analytics–informed methods used to do so in hopes that others will be compelled to replicate or extend this work in their own contexts. We found that students made corresponding revisions at both macro and microstructural levels when provided with directive or declarative feedback, and they made few revisions when tutors provided open-ended questions.

Especially in the wake of the recent pandemic, asynchronous consulting has become increasingly central to writing center work. Yet writing center scholarship has little attended to the significant impact writer input can have on asynchronous writer-consultant exchanges. Drawing on asynchronous consultation data collected before and after our 2019 redesign of our writing center’s asynchronous system, this comparative study examines the specific effect of the writer appointment form on the nature of both writers’ requests for feedback (RFFs) and consultants’ resulting comments. Our findings suggest that differently designed appointments forms can scaffold significantly different kinds of asynchronous writer-consultant exchanges, especially visible in the different emphases writers and consultants put on issues of correctness, clarity, organization, and the writer’s rhetorical situation. We argue that, particularly in the case of asynchronous consulting—which can easily devolve to a “fix-it” model of consulting—it is important for writing center administrators to design asynchronous platforms that encourage both writers and consultants to more explicitly consider how the specific rhetorical features of a writing task can shape revising goals.

From 2012 to 2015, the online grammar program Grammarly was claimed to complement writing center services by 1. increasing student access to writing support; and 2. addressing sentence-level issues, such as grammar. To test if Grammarly could close these two gaps in writing center services, this article revisits the results of a Spring 2014 study that compared Grammarly' s comment cards to the written feedback of 10 asynchronous online consultants. The results showed that both Gram-marly and some consultants strayed from effective practices regarding limiting feedback, avoiding technical language, and providing accurate information about grammatical structure. However, the consultants' weaknesses could be addressed with enhanced or focused training, and their strengths allowed for important learning opportunities that enable student access to information across mediums and help students establish connections between their sentences and the larger whole. This article concludes that each writing center should consider their own way of closing these gaps and offers suggestions for multiple consultation genres, new services, and strategies for sentence-level concerns.

Much of the scholarship on writing centers narrates the stories of writers and their texts as told by tutors, administrators, and researchers. In an effort to bring writers' voices to the forefront, this empirical study examines the types of questions and concerns writers have about their writing as submitted through the Purdue Writing Lab's OWL Mail, an online, asynchronous question-and-answer email platform. Through the employment of what Richard H. Haswell ( The implications of these results and the ways they may inform tutor preparation in response to writers' email inquiries are discussed. Suggestions for future research are also provided.

In recent years, scholars within the writing center community have urged for improved research practices within the held.Lore and experience have long been the field's guiding influence.In response, many writing center professionals have called for action, rightly suggesting that rigorous research will invigorate the field.Lore has its place in informing scholarship, as others have pointed out (Babcock & Thonus, 2012;Gillam, 2002;Gillespie, 2002;Sosnoski, 1991).But reliance on lore alone leads to missed opportunities and can result in scholarly stagnation (Eodice, Jordan, & Price, 2015; Wcenter threads; calls for action lodged over and over indicating that the call is going largely unanswered).Discussions surrounding the format of asynchronous online tutoring exemplify the shortcomings of relying on lore alone; a format that could have represented an innovation has instead been largely relegated to the sidelines of the field.This article traces the conversation surrounding asynchronous online tutoring in order to demonstrate the divide that occurs when the field relies on lore.Then,

Examining 200 word choice errors from Chinese students' drafts submitted to a writing center's online asynchronous tutoring program, the present study demonstrates that second language writers need help with word choice. Word choice problems, a natural part of second language learning, can negatively affect rhetorical effectiveness and readers' comprehension and evaluation. The study showed that 11% of online tutors' marginal comments related to word choice problems, among which 18% were due to translation. (Other error types were Wrong Context, Synform, Idiomaticity, Precision, and Register.) Direct corrections were the most common type of tutor comments -35%. (Other comment types were Explanation, Options, and Questions.) These numbers show that word choice errors are indeed critical, that even experienced writers rely on their first language, and tutors need more knowledge about word choice issues and how to provide instruction and feedback on them.

In its 2011 report, the CCCC Committee on Best Practice in Online Writing Instruction (OWI) states that it "takes no position on the oft-asked question of whether OWI should be used and practiced in postsecondary settings because it accepts the reality that currently OWI is used and practiced in such settings" (Hewett et al. 2). The committee claims that teachers and administrators, including those in writing centers, "typically are simply migrating traditional faceto-face writing pedagogies to the online setting-both fully online and hybrid. Theory and practice specific to OWI has yet to be fully developed" (7). Hewets recent book on OWI echoes these concerns, and she claims that without a theory of OWI, it is "disturbingly easy" to assume that face-to-face pedagogy is better than computer-mediated instruction (i Online 32).