Post for 4/3

It's interesting to think about a research study in the writing center because I still feel so new to it. I'm curious to know more about the writing center research out there, and what sorts of things can in fact be measured. For example, would it be possible to discover how effective different tutor strategies are? I know we have learned about different techniques tutors can use--asking questions, explaining, motivational language and so on. But what about the use of silence? Sometimes in tutoring sessions I am very conscious of how long I am waiting in silence, for instance, after I ask a question. It's a tough game between giving the student sufficient time to think about the question and respond and worrying that my question was not clear enough, and then breaking the silence to either rephrase (and run the risk of confusing the student more) or to provide the answer. So, I wonder if there is an ideal amount of time to let the silence play out. Because often I get to the end of a tutoring session feeling like there has been constant sound (conversation, reading sentences aloud and so on) and I wonder if perhaps a bit more silence to let thoughts and new things settle in would be a good thing.

So, long way of saying that it would be interesting to study the effectiveness of silence in an in-person tutoring session. Perhaps a large number of tutoring sessions could be recorded and the silent times quantified. And then there is the trouble of assessing success. Perhaps the success of more silence or less silence could be measured on whether or not the student is able to understand and interpret whatever the tutor is asking or explaining. Could this be measured over time, if perhaps the student asks the same question more than once or does not seem to have learned a concept? Though it would be very hard to tell if the learning or not learning is based on the amount of silence in a session and not any other of the many things that happen in a session--but perhaps with a very large sample size? (Clearly I am not very scientifically minded.)

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