As stated in my last blog post, I have been asking myself question on how to improve the writing center. How can we gather feedback from students? How can we use that information to better serve our goals of making better writers? Has anyone put such ideas to good use?
In order to find out more about how our peer departments solicit feedback from students, I scheduled a meeting with a friend, Ryan, who was a tutor at the Academic Skill Center. We had a long talk over an hour and what he said really interested me. Basically, according to him, Academic Skill Center operated upon a strict and highly structural system of feedback from students. At the end of each tutoring session, the tutor would give the student a sheet of paper containing the link to the online evaluation form. There the students would take about a few minutes to rate the tutoring session and the tutor, as well as giving their own recommendations. The evaluations would then go directly to the overseer of the Academic Skill Center, and they would be entered into the tutor's specific service record. Not only did this practice help the Academic Skill Center improve itself, it also sped up promotion or demotion in the Center. "That way we are able to distinguish the great tutors from the bad ones, if there is any", Ryan said. Interestingly enough, Academic Skill Center tutors don't work permanently. Employment in the Center is merit-based. The head staff of the Center decides which tutors will continue to work next year based on the students' evaluation and their own evaluation. Ryan referred to this as "being called back". Obviously, evaluation is vital to the employment and promotion of the tutor. It helps maintain fairness in the workplace and instills motivation in the tutors to work hard and to be responsible.
On a side note, Ryan also mentioned the overseer of the Center could sometimes drop in suddenly and watch the tutoring session to get an idea of the tutor in question. This system of monitoring is thus highly structural and instrumental to the principles of the Academic Skill Center.
Ryan also mentioned the Speech Center employed a similar system, but he could not specify.
It is such a great system and its incorporation would greatly benefit the writing center.
Long, I think you make a very interesting point! Even though becoming a writing tutor has some barriers to entry (i.e. taking a class for an entire semester) it is still possible for unskilled writers to become tutors. That is an extreme situation, but there is something to be said for those tutors who simply do not put as much effort into their sessions as others. By having an evaluation system that could possibly adversely effect the future of tutors, I'm sure it would weed out the strong from the weak. Great idea!
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