The effectiveness of online and on-to-one tutoring in the writing center on the students' achievement: a multiple case study

Abstract

The Writing Center at Notre Dame University-Louaize (NDU) is a place where students can improve and develop their writing skills by working one-on-one with tutors. This study compares between the progress performance of students who come regularly to the Writing Center to work one-to-one with the same tutor and use the online tutorial services to students who don't visit the Writing Center, but only depend on the traditional classroom instructions and direct instructor's comments and feedback on the writing. This study is divided into two parts. As a start, 80 students were asked to write two in-class essays on two different days. Each of these essays was considered as draft one. Then, in the first part of the study, 58 students sat twice per week one-on-one with the same tutor in order to seek help before writing draft two for the two essays. 29 students met face-to-face with the tutors and the other 29 students worked on-line with the tutors. Whereas, the other 22 students were asked to write the second draft of the same two essays without any one-on-one or on-line tutoring sessions. Both qualitative and quantitative data analyses were conducted. Main results showed that the students who worked one-on-one and on-line with the same tutors in the Writing Center exhibited noticeable improvement than the students who relied only on the traditional classroom instruction and direct instructor's feedback on draft one. Moreover, the students who worked on-line with their tutors got the highest scores. The study concluded with recommendations addressed to universities, instructors, and students in order to enhance and motivate students to attend the Writing Center on regular basis.