Here at the Academic Support and Achievement Program, we have the opportunity to connect with students on a one-on-one basis every day. Tutors working face-to-face with students ask them questions which help to clarify their writing or their thinking about particular courses or assignments; such meetings are also opportunities for tutors to really listen and get a sense of how their students are thinking and feeling in a more general sense.

When we began considering adding online support to our in-person peer and professional tutoring services, we wanted to do so in a way that would allow tutors to maintain this sort of connection with students, and we didn’t feel that, from what we’d seen of programs at other schools, an email based system would support that. Fortunately, after some searching, we chose a technology which allows tutors and students to work together online in real time, using a combined whiteboard and chat interface from WorldWideWhiteboard. This way, tutors can still use the Socratic questioning techniques that are at the heart of our face-to-face tutoring services, and can still maintain those vital connections with students, even when the tutors and/or students are away from the campus environment.

We encourage students to try this new way of connecting to academic support services by trying NightOWL, our late evening online tutoring service currently offering writing help for CPN 100/102 and 101/103 students. This service is open Monday through Thursday, from 9 to 11.30 pm on a drop-in, first-come, first-served basis. Additionally, students might check to see if their professors are offering online office hours, as some have indicated interest in using WWWb technology for that. We hope that these new electronic options will make it easier and more accessible for students to connect with the support professionals and faculty that they need to be successful and feel at home here at Cortland.

If you are trying to “Register” for the Connectivities blog, Wordpress will allow you to create a login, but does not send you an email with your password.  We have not been able to correct this problem.  Therefore, if you are interested in registering for the blog, please email baranm@cortland.edu after you have created your login, and a password will be emailed to you.

However, you do not need to register for the blog to post comments, so everyone can feel free to post his or her opinion about any topic we discuss on the blog.