This session conveys the findings of an autoethnographic exploration of writing coordinator experiences in one online EdD program during COVID in spring 2020 and speaks to effective strategies for supporting students in times of stress. Emergent themes in those practices included increased flexibility, emotional support, and intentional scheduling.
While March 2020 signaled school closures and moves online for many educational institutions, one online EdD program at a mid-sized private, Baptist university in the Southwest United States featured no such programmatic changes. Instead, while students experienced the stresses and experiences of the novel Coronavirus outbreak, they also attended classes and worked on their problem of practice dissertations, receiving support from the program’s writing center as well as faculty and other support staff. This session conveys the findings of an autoethnographic exploration of those writing coordinators’ experiences and speaks to effective strategies for supporting students in times of stress. Initial themes in those practices included increased flexibility, emotional support, and intentional scheduling.
Site and participants
The researchers work in a program-specific writing center that serves a student population of about 400 online doctoral students. Students move through the program in a cohort model, completing all coursework and their problem of practice dissertation in three years. Students schedule writing center consultations online through Microsoft Bookings software and consultations occur on the Zoom videoconferencing platform.
Each of the researchers comes to the role with varying levels of experience: the center director worked at the undergraduate writing center at the university before founding the EdD Writing Center. The most senior writing coordinator worked for the graduate school on final formatting and technical reviews of dissertations. One coordinator directed an undergraduate writing center at another university before moving into her current role. The fourth member of the team began as a graduate assistant in the current writing center before stepping into a full-time staff role.
Methodology
The use of autoethnographic inquiry enables the exploration of self within the context of broader social phenomena (Hayler, 2012). In the gathering and telling of stories through narrative research, researchers “gather “knowledge from the past and not necessarily knowledge about the past" (Bochner, 2007, p.203, original emphasis). This narrative autoethnography allowed us to draw from previous experiences and explore them thematically, thereby creating meaning. Events can only be understood and assigned meaning in retrospect (Polkinghorne, 1995). Because of this limitation of experience and understanding, autoethnography provides an opportunity for reflection and meaning making after the experiences. This meaning making can then shape writing center praxis within our own program and in other universities. To be clear, we do not and cannot study these experiences directly, because “language, speech, and systems of discourse mediate and define the very experience we attempt to describe” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000, p. 636). However, the study of these interpretations and representations of self whereby the researcher is simultaneously researcher and research subject allows for deeper understandings, as “many [. . .] argue that we can study only our own experiences” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000, p. 636). Each researcher examined the ways that they adapted their support in response to the pandemic, including reflection, reviewing logs, notes, and video recordings of sessions, particularly those appointments held or rescheduled during March and April 2020.
Findings
Through analysis, certain themes in student support emerged, including increased flexibility, emotional support, and intentional scheduling.