Procedures for Online Tutors

• Meet with Diana and/or Sandy to discuss the project
• Read all the pages on this site about the Online Writing Assistance Center and understand how it works
• Examine the tutor's comments on essays already posted in the OWAC (archives and current quarter)
• Begin working through the Online Tutor Training Course
• Get your OWAC user id from Sandy or Diana
• Attend an orientation and training meeting
• Determine the day(s) of the week that you will be checking the OWAC, and be sure those days are posted corectly in the "Current Tutor Availability" link on the Forums page and in the Study Hall.
• Email a picture and bio of yourself to be added to the Study Hall.

• Use your user id to log on to the OWAC and set up your password
• Go to the Forums section and register (Forums registration is in addition to the login to get into the OWAC)
• In Forums, use the User Menu subscribe to the Essay Center and Grammar Center conferences so that you will be alerted when a new essay or question is posted
• Set preferences to create a signature and automatically log you in to forums

1. Check the OWAC as early as you can and several times througout the day on your assigned day(s), and other days if you possibly can. It is very important that you check reliably, or make arrangements for another tutor to cover for you if you cannot.
2. When a new student essay or question is posted, you will recieve an e-mail. However, if a student sends an essay to you through Messages you will not.
3. Check and respond to Messages.
4. Go to Forum and click on the oldest unresponded-to essay or question.
5. Immediately reply to the posting or message to let the student and other tutors know that you are working on a response. This will prevent other tutors from duplicating your efforts, and if the student chose to subscribe to the topic, will send an e-mail to the student letting him or her know that the essay is in process.
6. Copy and paste the essay into a text editor such as MS Word. It is better not to compose in the text box, since your hard work could be accidentally deleted.
7. Write your intro comments with a friendly and positive greeting, summarizing 2-3 (no more!) areas you identified as needing improvement, and refering to appropriate websites (try to use the De Anza Online Writing Tutor Boilerplate Language as a guide)
8. Add your "intertext" comments within the essay either in ALL CAPS or by cutting and pasting color or bolding tags from the (funky) HTML guide within the Forums (click "html reference" for the popup window.) Try to resist editing the paper!
9. Finally, copy and paste your response into the Forum or Messages reply text box. You may also want to add the file as an attachment (but always paste it too, in case there is a problem reading the attachment.)
10. If the tutoring was done through Messages, copy Sandy and Diana on your response.
11. Reward yourself with some kind of treat; online tutoring is hard work!