Heráclito: el logos

The target population for all of the research instruments was students who had either visited or worked in the Georgia State Writing Studio, and since visiting the Writing Studio is not mandatory, the initial target population was self-selected and hence voluntary. For the tutor group, anyone who had tutored in the Writing Studio over the past two years

(including current tutors) received an invitation to respond to the initial survey. Apart from the requirement that the student writers group consist of students who had visited the Writing Studio multiple times, there was no other criteria applied for the initial e-mail sent out inviting student writer recipients to take the initial survey. The focus groups were formed of respondents to the initial surveys.

Surveys of Writing Studio Tutors and Student Writers

I recruited discussion participants by sending a survey response request via e-mail (see Appendix C) out to present and former graduate student administrators and tutors for the Tutors Focus Group, with the final question asking if the respondent would be willing to participate in an online focus group during one week between August 15 – October 1, 2010. For the Student Writers Focus Group, I recruited discussion participants by sending out an e-mail invitation to take an online tutoring session survey (see Appendix D) to the e-mail list of 146 tutees who had visited the Georgia State Writing Studio at least six times in the last two years (AY 2008/2009 and AY 2009/2010); the last question on the survey asked

respondents if they would be willing to participate in an online focus group during the same time as the Tutors Group. For both focus groups, having participated in an online tutoring session (as either tutor or tutee) was not a requirement, as tutors and tutees alike still have expectations and perceptions concerning online tutoring sessions, and it was those

expectations and perceptions that this research sought to explicate and use in a creative and constructive fashion.

Online Focus Groups

In their book A Research Primer for Technical Communication: Methods, Exemplars, and Analyses, Michael Hughes and George Hayhoe note that, though rarer than other forms of research in technical communication, the qualitative research report is nonetheless a valuable tool for research in this field (86). The model I follow in my research project is the one described by Hughes and Hayhoe in their chapter on analyzing qualitative reports, where the model they use is Greg Wilson and Julie Dyke Ford‘s article of May 2003, ―The Big Chill: Seven Technical Communicators Talk Ten Years After Their Master‘s Program.‖ Because of the challenges involved in getting their focus group together in one physical space at one time, Wilson and Ford chose to hold their focus group sessions online. They did this by setting up a listserv for the exclusive use of the focus group. They selected participants by first sending out a survey to the target population, and the last survey

question asked survey respondents if they would be willing to participate in an online focus group (qtd. in Hughes and Hayhoe). I recruited discussion participants using the same e- mail process that I described in the preceding section on surveys; the last question asked if they would be willing to participate in an online focus group. If they responded in the affirmative, then they were asked to provide their e-mail addresses, so I could contact them once I had made arrangements for the focus group sessions.

Once I received answers back from the survey respondents, I was able to build my invitee list. As the initial invitee list depended on the frequency of Writing Studio visits, no demographic information other than gender was available or used in the construction of the

initial invitee list. However, as each survey contained a small demographic section, the final focus group invitee list contained representatives from various ethnic and gender groups.

The listserv focus groups generated discussions for both sides of the tutoring equation: the tutor/administrator side and the tutee side. While the purpose of the Tutors Focus Group was to generate discussion about tutor experiences along with their

expectations of online tutoring session outcomes, the purpose of the Student Writers Focus listserv was to generate discussion among students about their perceptions and experiences of either online tutoring sessions or the online writing studio web space. The listserv discussions for both groups took place between August 15, 2010, and October 1, 2010.

Similar to the listserv conversations used by Wilson and Ford, the text of the focus group listservs referenced in this dissertation (and found in Appendices G and H) was edited for length and ―to remove off-topic discussions and references to specific people and

organizations‖ (157). The initial two questions for both focus groups were the same: What metaphors or images come to mind when you think of the Georgia State Writing Studio? What are your expectations from an online tutoring session? From those two questions, the questions diverged, depending on the conversational development that took place. Here are some additional questions that I had in my interview question bank:

 Given the definition of rhetoric as ―using all available means of persuasion,‖ do you

find elements of the Writing Studio online tutoring session pages persuasive? Rhetorical? Why do you answer the way you do?

 In what ways should the Writing Studio online tutoring session pages support the

academic work of students? What benefits should students find there? What challenges and obstacles should not be found there?

 Does the design of the web pages for Writing Studio online tutoring sessions facilitate teaching and learning about writing?

 What metaphors not only represent the teaching and learning taking place today, but

respect and accommodate people from diverse cultures and backgrounds?

 What are the elements of successful online communities? Does the design of the

interface for Writing Studio online tutoring sessions facilitate building a sense of community?

 Is it possible to apply a conversational model to an interface for online tutoring, and if yes, what pedagogy should inform such a model?

I initiated the discussion by posting the first question to the list and asking that everyone in the group post an answer to the question and then discuss and react to the comments made by the other respondents. The question sparked an initial flurry of responses and comments, and when the traffic on the listserv fell off, I deemed it a good time to post

another question. As I wanted to maintain the open and flexible structure of a focus group, I did not try to moderate or contribute to the list; I just asked the questions, occasionally sending out reminders if certain people seemed to be absent for an extended period.

Transcripts of the online focus groups are included in this research as Appendices G and H. I report on the conversations of the online focus groups and discuss their applications in my design process in Chapter Four.