CTDLC/Smarthinking Writing Tutors’
Best Practices and Procedures
1) Offline Questions- We do not receive many of these for writing, but we still offer this as a
service to students. Please make sure to check and respond to offline questions at the
beginning of each session. Return your response to students using the “Send and Archive”
button.
2) Technical Challenges- The biggest problem we face with the technology is returning the
wrong document to students. Almost every tutor, at one time or another, has returned the
original paper to the student, not the markup. To avoid this problem, please create a
special folder where you save only your completed essay responses. This is where you
will go to upload your completed response to the student. Also, you can check to make sure
you sent the correct response by going to the list of “Last 5 essays” in your tutor account.
You can click on the link to the student’s paper. This will open the document and you can
see exactly what you sent to the student. If, for any reason, you sent the student the wrong
document, please email the correct document to Smarthinking tech support along with the
student’s name and institution. Please “cc” me in your message so I am aware you have
addressed the problem.
3) Model excellent writing in you responses. Please take the time to check for your own
typos and errors. Students do notice your mistakes.
4) Become more familiar with the Online Academic Resources. There are many links you
can refer students to expand upon your comments and enrich their learning experience.
Please use these links when appropriate. This is also helpful when referring to correct MLA
or APA citation. Links for these resources are available within our Academic Honesty
Policy.
5) Consider keeping all relevant documents on your desktop or on a floppy or a CD if you
are working remotely. If a COSC student asks for help with a concentration proposal, you
can refer to the document that describes the proposal to familiarize yourself more thoroughly
with the assignment. Or if you want to include the Academic Honesty Policy in your reply to
a student, it is there for your immediate usage. Many of the documents you might want to
refer to (including this one) can be downloaded from CTDLC’s website at:
http://www.ctdlc.org/Evaluation/DavisDocs/tutordocuments.html .
6) Working with the ESL Student- Many of the writing tutors are familiar with approaches for
working with the ESL student. This was evident in the great success we had with one very
motivated student who utilized our services many times, demonstrating outstanding
improvement over the course of a semester. If you feel you could improve upon your own
understanding of the needs of the ESL student, or if you want to explore the resources we
have available specifically for ESL students, an ESL writing handbook for both tutors and
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students is available in the online academic resources. This is an area we may want to track
and discuss further over the course of the semester. Please feel free to send your insights to
Carolyn and to each other.
7) To provide students with more consistency when multiple drafts of a paper are
reviewed by different tutors:
a) Check the student’s archives- when you see that an essay submission is a 2nd or 3rd draft
on the student’s submission page, please take the time to click on the link at the very top
that refers to a student’s essay submission history. Here you will find all of the other
drafts of the student’s essay that you can review and refer to in your reply.
b) Try to build on the previous tutor’s advice and add your own.
8) Students may have unreal expectations as to the grade they expect on a paper because of a
tutor’s positive comments; giving the impression the paper was very good. If they receive a
poor grade they may feel misled.
a) Try and balance your comments so that the student feels encouraged, and that strengths
of an essay are noted, but also, that problem areas are given the primary emphasis in your
reply.
b) Do not say anything that the student might misconstrue as meaning their essay will
surely get a good grade.
9) How much is too much? The degree to which we correct, edit, or comment on a student’s
work continues to be a primary concern of our participating faculty and administrators.
Together, the writing tutors identified the following suggestions to help frame appropriate
responses to students:
a) Check the archives- sometimes students don’t make changes in response to a previous
tutor’s work. As suggested, utilizing the archives to review a previous draft of an essay
will provide the student with more consistency, and will give you something to work
from rather than starting from scratch with each essay.
b) Request that students provide more clarity about the assignment- respond to the
essay as best you can, explaining to the student s/he would receive a more meaningful
reply if a more complete description of the assignment were provided.
c) Address and attempt to balance both Higher Order Concerns and Lower Order
Concerns- while the overwhelming need for attention to grammar and mechanics is
evident in many of our students’ essays, it is essential that we focus as well on issues of
structure, organization, content development, etc.
d) Limit your focus- within a given essay there can be an overwhelming number of
mistakes, particularly with our ESL students. Attempt to identify and address the 2-3
most important issues you think a student should focus on.
e) Refer the student to resources online- be aware of the academic resources available
through Smarthinking and use other online resources that you believe will be helpful.
We have some suggested sites for writing research papers and citation of sources. These
can be found within the Academic Honesty Statement.
f) Encourage proofreading techniques- some students never proofread. Encouraging
them to read the paper aloud, either alone or to someone else, could help them identify
basic grammar and mechanics errors.
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g) Encourage the student to re-submit his or her revised essay for further evaluation
h) Utilize our established protocols for addressing plagiarism, both intentional and
unintentional:
i) When a student is suspected of plagiarizing a paper, copy and paste the Academic
Honesty Policy into your response. Explain to the student the paper cannot be
reviewed until the student makes the appropriate changes. Give some initial guidance
as to what changes need to be made, and encourage the student to resubmit the essay
when finished.
10) Students may have unreal expectations regarding the service you are providing as
an online tutor. The following information is provided on the CTDLC log in page
and in the email students receive when creating a new account. If a student is
requesting inappropriate assistance, i.e. requesting that a paper be “edited,” the
following information can be cut and pasted into the student response in an effort to
foster understanding regarding the tutor’s role and the student’s responsibility:
Our Online tutors will:
 Encourage you with constructive criticism
 Help you identify areas for improvement
 Involve you in discussion and problem-solving strategies
 Treat you with respect
Our Online Tutors will not:
 Do assignments for you, give answers or write any portion of papers
 Review and correct errors without your active participation
As always, we keep on learning. Over the course of this semester, keep in mind what you
feel are our best practices, our desired procedures, our areas requiring improvement. We
don’t need to wait until next semester to learn from our successes and our mistakes!
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