By Katie Layendecker, Carthage College

Our Purpose

When our director asked my co-trainer and me if there was anything we’d like to change about our training program, we knew we wanted to modernize it in a way that was both informational and fun. We couldn’t forget that, for the most part, our audience is first-year students who don’t know what a writing center is like. The new tutor training program at our writing center is led by experienced tutors and has been more or less unchanged for the past four years. This means that all of our current tutors were trained with the same material. However, each year, new trainers have the autonomy to consider how to modify the training curriculum to meet current needs. As a new tutor trainer in my third year of doing the same training, I felt it was time that we assess our training. With my co-new-tutor trainer Lily, we took the leap to change our curriculum. 

 Since my co-trainer and I had a full semester to prepare our new materials, we began by re-reading the Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring. This textbook was the main information source for how we framed discussions in our training program. New tutors would read a chapter each week during their shifts, and then we would discuss the reading as a group. The Allyn and Bacon Guide felt like a helpful tool for us, but it also felt like a dated text for our training program. Published in 1997, we found that we sometimes felt disconnected from the content because of its age.  Additionally, the book is influenced by the writing center at Marquette University, and instead, we wanted the influence to come from our writing center at Carthage College, a small intimate space, hoping with this work to build our community connection. 

We were also able to ask our current tutors who had gone through the training what they found most useful and what they would like to see changed about the program. We found people connected most to the parts of the training that were personal and revolved around hearing other people’s stories about writing centers. These narratives and dialogs are a big portion of the book and our new training model. For example, in the first chapter, “Why We Tutor,”  there are six narratives from tutors describing what motivates them to work in their writing center. We thought if something like this could be helpful in the form of writing, then it could be even more beneficial if they could hear it from people they know. We wanted to continue using The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring, but also decided to create something more specific to our context and provide a modern, multi-modal training experience. With this in mind, we asked our current tutors to create videos similar to the narratives written by the Marquette University tutors in The Allyn and Bacon Guide.  

We began by recording our current staff sharing their experiences in the writing center to share with our new writers. I think every writing center has something special about it, and that’s the people; no writing center will have the same people. That’s why our perspective is so important: we are the current representation of the Carthage writing center. For instance, right now, we have Art majors, STEM majors (all the way from Biology to Math and so much more), Japanese majors, and more. These majors inform our perspectives and the diversity of our writing center.  Additionally, our 20-25 undergraduate writing tutors take on significant administrative work as early as their freshman year.  This structure is something that we felt needed to be highlighted in our training. We also wanted to highlight the diversity of our staff. By using these videos, we allow our new tutors to see how our writing center is from the perspective of those they work with.  This can also help the focus for some readers; as Chloe Mellgren, class of ‘24 says, “If I had these videos, it would’ve helped me understand the book more. Since I am a visual learner, hearing and seeing a summary would be helpful, especially understanding it from someone who works here already.” 

How We Made the Change

To create the new training materials, we offered four prompts, as shown to the right, and this allowed the whole staff the opportunity to participate in the way they were most comfortable. Also, it created a connection between our training materials and our staff. My co-trainer and I prepared the staff to create their videos during the fall semester by sending them out a month in advance so they had the time and opportunity to re-read the section of the book they were commenting on. Given the text’s importance to our process, we emphasized re-reading what they could of the book, focusing on the chapter they were reflecting on.

While filming individually came up as an idea, we ultimately decided we wanted it to be a group effort because if these videos were to create a stronger group dynamic for our new tutors, they could also create a stronger group dynamic for our current tutors. Fortunately, our staff has a regular weekly staff meeting we were able to use to record each other. 

We separated each group based on their prompt so our peers could record 30-second to minute-and-a-half-long videos. We used our phones for simplicity in the process, making the process quick and easily finished in a one-hour staff meeting. Upon reflecting on the process, several of our current tutors felt positive about the experience. One of our tutors shared, “I feel like this filming went really well! I think it helped that this was such a short video clip and that the prompt was about speaking from experience” (Sophia Choronzuk, ‘26).  I had hoped this process would reflect as welcoming and helpful to the current tutors as well as the new tutors, so it was encouraging to find that these videos created a sense of community for our current tutors.

You can see one of our completed tutor videos here:

How it Went

Our goals for this process were integration and repetition. We created this multi-modal training process to hopefully make community building easier than in previous years, while also creating something that could continue after I graduate and be recreated as needed. Videos are easily refilmed as new members join the staff and others graduate. In looking back on how the training went, I feel those goals were met.

A major benefit of this form of training is the integration I’ve seen of new and current tutors. Since we only see each other as a full group once a week, the large group staff meetings can be intimidating to new tutors because, on average, we have only 8 new tutors entering a room of about 20 current staff that they don’t know. In an effort to create some recognition before the first staff meeting of the semester, one of the first things we did in our first training session was show the new tutors four ‘Why we tutor’ videos. I quickly noticed that some of our new tutors were already introducing themselves and talking to our current tutors at the following full staff meeting. 

The videos helped introduce our staff as approachable people, as they get to learn things about them, like their year, major, and some of the things they find beneficial in the writing center. Marcus, one of our new tutors, explains it this way,  “Not only did the video series help me gain knowledge on the tutoring process, but it also helped me get to know my fellow tutors. Seeing different tutors speaking, even through videos, helped me gain insight into their personalities and also their tutoring styles. This made the weekly all-staff meetings easier because I felt more of a sense of community within the Writing Center staff” (Marcus Lemons, ‘27).

On top of this, our videos created various ideas for our new tutors to consider. They have the book as a reference for ways to think of tutoring in a writing center, and they now have the videos of our current tutors they work with describing how they do that work. No single tutoring session in the writing center will be the same and every tutor will approach things differently; these videos seek to point out those variations for our new tutors. Ellie, one of our new tutors, shared her thoughts, “The videos are helpful, as they provide different tutors’s perspectives. It’s valuable to hear multiple opinions and experiences regarding different situations, as it’s important to be able to handle as many situations as possible” (Ellie Pavletich, ‘27).

Our ultimate goal was for our new tutors to feel connected to the training and the other people they worked with. I think these videos helped because how a tutor runs their sessions is so personal to them, so even though we aren’t asking personal questions, we can see how a person is through their answers in these videos, thus making someone feel more comfortable with them. After seeing how new tutors reacted to the training, it seems clear that our goals were met. Having multiple perspectives to reach out to in training is so important, and I’m glad to say that this training process gave that, both through the videos and the fact that if a new tutor is more comfortable with the current staff, they are more likely to reach out to multiple people for help.

While it will take continued effort to create new videos every few years to replace the old videos and let new tutors meet their current staff, I feel confident we can find one hour every couple of years to keep the videos updated. Having support from others on staff will help us make it a priority. For example Sophia Choronzuk, a current tutor, class of ‘26, said, “I just hope that we continue to do this in the future! I also hope that the new tutors found value in it.” 

Conclusion

This new multi-modal training model may not work for every writing center, but it certainly worked for ours. With it, I’ve seen an integration of new tutors into our staff in a way I hadn’t before, as well as the open opportunity for people who aren’t trainers to help with the training process. I’m proud to have created these materials and look forward to building on the experience.