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Ocotillo Spotlight on Instructional Technology... is a monthly electronic newsletter that highlights an innovative use of technology at one of the Maricopa Community Colleges.

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Ocotillo Spotlight on Instructional Technology

Note: The Ocotillo Spotlight is no longer published, but all previous issues will remain on this site.

spotlight for April 2002
The April 2002 Ocotillo Spotlight shines on Scottsdale Community College for recognizing and exploring the need to provide academic support services, such as tutoring, to supplement their online courses. This semester English faculty are piloting the online writing lab from "Smarthinking", an internet-based tutoring service.

Doug Sawyer
Ocotillo Faculty Chair
doug.sawyer@sccmail.maricopa.edu

Support Services for Online Courses
by Sharon Blanton and Cameron MacElvee, Scottsdale Community College
sharon.blanton@sccmail.maricopa.edu
cameron.macelvee@sccmail.maricopa.edu

Campus based helpdesk and tutoring services have been at the top of Ocotillo Technology Visioning discussions in recent months. As we introduce more online and hybrid courses, we need to create new ways to provide these kinds of essential support services. Scottsdale Community College (SCC) currently offers about 64 online courses covering subjects such as:

In addition, we have over 200 courses using BlackBoard as a supplement to traditional courses or in a hybrid format. These offerings allow a more flexible instructional format for students. Students can participate in discussions, submit assignments, and access course materials 24 hours a day, but they have to come to campus for tutoring services. Our tutoring centers are typically available Monday through Thursday from 7:00am - 11:00pm and Friday from 7:00am - 4:00pm. About a year ago, we began exploring methods to expand our tutoring services and to offer alternative solutions for students.

Online Tutoring Pilot Program
In January 2002, Scottsdale Community College (SCC) began a six-month pilot of the online tutoring services offered by Smarthinking.com. The company offers online tutoring in numerous subjects including:

Part of a SmartThinking student screen
that allows them to schedule tutor appointments.

Researching the Online Writing Lab (OWL)
To gain a better understanding of the Smarthinking service, we identified English 101 First-Year Composition faculty (Clara Fendley, Cameron MacElvee, Jamie Moore, Bob Mugford) who were eager to experiment with this type of program and to evaluate its effectiveness.

The faculty were particularly interested in the online writing lab (OWL) services. It was decided that students would submit the first draft of each assignment to the online writing lab. OWL tutors would then review the drafts and respond to the students within 72 hours. Finally, students would submit their first draft, the tutor's comments, and their final draft to the instructor.

From Smarthinking's demo, this screen shows schematically the process of how students submit their writing in the Online Writing Lab.

In addition to the tutor's comments and annotated first draft, participating faculty also elicited verbal feedback from their students. The majority of feedback was positive and students indicated that they liked the service despite the long wait between submission of their work and the subsequent feedback.

However, after careful examination of the tutor comments, annotated drafts and final drafts, it was noted that there were more than a few discrepancies between the feedback students received from the OWL tutors and the feedback/grading of the final drafts by instructors. While the errors in diction and academic appropriate language were at times overlooked in the tutor's comments, the incongruities concerning grammar and mechanics were the most notable and worrisome.

Results
After meeting with a representative of Smarthinking, it was agreed upon that for the OWL tutors to be truly effective, they must receive specific assignment directions and criteria regarding the instructors' expectations. In addition, the representative made note of specific concerns to relate back to the Smarthinking writing specialist.

At present, the participating faculty and their students will continue using the service through the end of the Spring 2002 semester. There are plans to evaluate the service once again at the end of the semester before any recommendations are made.

You can view a demo tutor session in accounting, chemistry, economics, math, online writing lab (OWL), or spanish to better understand how an online tutoring session work.

Smarthinking's main web site

About Smarthinking, Inc.
"SMARTHINKING, based in Washington, DC, provides people, technology and training to help post-secondary institutions offer their students outstanding online tutoring and academic support. Schools, colleges, universities, government agencies, textbook publishers and other education providers work with SMARTHINKING to increase student achievement and enhance learning by connecting students to qualified educators anytime, from any Internet connection. From supplementing current learning support programs with SMARTHINKING's qualified and trained e-structors, to licensing SMARTHINKING's technology platform to create a private-labeled virtual learning assistance center, SMARTHINKING develops custom solutions to allow institutions to better support their faculty and students.

SMARTHINKING currently works with over 200 school clients and businesses, including the U.S. Army, Kentucky Virtual University, California Virtual College, and Houghton Mifflin. Our unique standing in the e-learning market has allowed us to attract an outstanding management team and staff of over 100 professionals and educators."
http://www.smarthinking.com/
-- provided by Smarthinking.com

The content for this article was prepared for the web by Vanessa Warburton, PVCC student and intern at MCLI (nessawarbu@yahoo.com)