Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Students Emailing Papers
Hello Everyone,
I came into the center today and checked the OUWC email and found this email awaiting our reply:
Writing Center,
Hello, I am a current student at Oakland University and have a question concerning your revising policies. I attend Oakland on a full time basis, but live about an hour away. I would like to have a paper I am writing corrected, but find it inconvenient to travel to campus, especially with gas prices being so high. I am hoping that I can email you my paper and then again receive it, corrections and all, via email. This would be an ideal situation and I hope it won't be a problem. You can reply to me at this address. Thank you for your time.
I thought I would share it with all of you to get your opinion on this matter. I personally feel the student would not be gaining much from simply emailing his paper. It seems as though he just wants a spell check, as he claims "I am hoping that I can email you my paper and then again receive it, corrections and all, via email." I emailed him back with the Writing Center's hours as well as the satellite hours. I also voiced my concern over simply emailing his paper back and forth. How would you all have responded? I worry I may have pushed him away by not offering what he desired; however our purpose is not to spell check and proof read. Any major problems with his writing could not be brought up simply through an email. I was also unsure whether we had done such a thing in the past. If I was wrong in my response to this student please do share! After all I won't know unless you tell me. :)
Hope all is well with everyone!
Lea
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4 comments:
I think you did the right thing. I don't think we want to send the message that we are a revision service, happily correcting assignments via email. I agree that the student will not gain anything in this type of scenario. I'm sensitive to the gas issue, but we all have to prioritize.
I think you did a good job Lea! We learned a lot about those types of situations in Professor Hamilton's class. She told us, along with Sherry, how people think of the writing center as just a "fix it shop." We also read many articles in Hamilton's class that supported that theory. I think the personal face to face interaction is what the student can truly benefit from. Plus, us as tutors, benefit greatly by seeing the students body language and nonverbal communication. We can tell if the student is confused by our comments and suggestions and it gives them ample opportunity to ask us questions!
While Lea and I have already talked about this issue in the office, I want to reaffirm my support for Lea's stance. While there is a role for electronic consultants in the future of this center, electronic editing will always be the job of paid professionals. Students do not learn when others do the work for them. In fact, neither do faculty. I edit a lot of faculty publications for pay, and I would say that they don't learn much from re-reading my corrections. They only know that papers that were once rejected as unreadable are now accepted in prestigious journals. I repeatedly invite faculty clients to come into the center to learn conventions that will allow them to self-edit, but most prefer to have me "clean it up." Bravo!
As for Karli, I hank you for responding to your colleague in a timely manner and for reminding us about where we have heard these ideas before. It is important for us to keep revisiting earlier lessons and wisdom, especially as new situations remind us why we take the positions that we do.
I completely agree with what you ladies have said. I think that students and consultants benefit so much more from face to face interaction. I have done some editing through e-mail with some of the students I privately tutor. Truthfully, I really don't care to "fix-up" drafts over the computer. Although, like Sherry stated, there will always be plenty of editing professionals, and I completely understand this concept. I always think to myself, "What is the student learning?" and "How will this help him or her for the next time?" We all know the anwsers to those questions. We just have to keep helping others to see the real benefits of the face to face consultation.
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