Is This a Real Person? A Tutor's Response to Navigating Identity in the Spaces of a Synchronous Electronic Writing Center

Abstract

This chapter explores some of the theoretical and pedagogical issues that emerged from a study of identity, collaboration, and discourse methods in synchronous online writing center tutoring. Based on a newly introduced online component of an established university writing center, the premise of this study was to advance tutor training in the context of transferring traditional face-to-face (F2F) methodology to a synchronous terminal-to-terminal environment in a way that effectively preserved the integrity of dialogic collaboration. What emerged became a study of the rhetoric of face and space, in which an understanding of the complexities of online identity perception and projection becomes key to adapting existing F2F tutoring methods to online space in a way that promotes pedagogically sound discourse and learning.