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This dissertation unites two seemingly unrelated fields, writing centers and technical writing, to study the feasibility of creating an online technical writing resource. Despite prolonged attention to multiliteracies and collaboration in both subfields, writing centers and technical writing do not commonly implicate one another in their shared mission of shaping students to become savvy writers with an awareness of rhetorical concepts and situations. This dissertation establishes how complementary these two fields are based upon their shared pedagogies of collaboration and multiliteracies. I suggest that a service design approach is beneficial to writing center research. Similarly, the technical writing field has little research and scholarship dedicated specifically to online writing instruction and pedagogy. Historically, writing centers have served students from all disciplines, but research demonstrates the effectiveness of specialist over generalist writing support. Taking a specialist perspective, I use service design methodology to gather input from student and instructor stakeholders about how online writing tutoring and web resources can address their needs. Using survey and interview data, I designed and piloted an online tutoring service for students enrolled in the Technical Writing service course at Virginia Tech. In student and instructor surveys, participants reported that they were highly unlikely to use online tutoring sessions but were more likely to use a course-specific website. Additionally, student interviews revealed that the Writing Center is not necessarily a highly-used resource, especially for upper-level students. Instructor interviewees indicated some misunderstandings and limited views of the Writing Center's mission. Nevertheless, a small number of participants in both groups spoke to a need for specialized tutoring in the Technical Writing course. In terms of feasibility, integration of online services for this course poses the greatest challenge because it relates to the amount of change needed to successfully integrate online tutoring or web resources into the curriculum. With some attention to how OWLs and synchronous online tutoring can be an asset to teaching technical writing online, I argue that the pilot project described in this study is relatively feasible. / Doctor of Philosophy / A feasibility study addresses whether or not an idea or plan is good. In the case of this dissertation, the idea is whether or not to offer online writing services—such as tutoring and a repository website—to students enrolled in Technical Writing at Virginia Tech. In order to study the feasibility of this plan, I first argue for bringing together the fields of writing centers and technical writing. Two strong reasons for uniting these fields are based upon their shared methods and practices of teaching collaboration and multiliteracies. Multiliteracies in this dissertation refers to critical, functional, and rhetorical computer literacies; each literacy is important for Technical Writing students to develop as they enter their future careers. Historically, writing centers are places on a college or university campus where students from all disciplines can go for tutoring; this is known as the generalist approach to writing tutoring. However, research demonstrates the effectiveness of a specialist approach—where a tutor is familiar with a student’s discipline—to writing tutoring over generalist writing support. Therefore, I take a specialist perspective in this study. I use service design system of methods to gather input from student and instructor stakeholders about how online writing tutoring and web resources can address their needs. Service design is commonly used in the service economy, such as restaurants and hotels, in order to design or redesign services. In particular, service design focuses on people and their needs. Using survey and interview data, I designed and piloted an online tutoring service and a website for students enrolled in the Technical Writing service course at Virginia Tech. In student and instructor surveys, participants reported that they were highly unlikely to use online tutoring sessions but were more likely to use a course-specific website. Additionally, student interviews revealed that the Writing Center at Virginia Tech is not necessarily a highly-used resource, especially for upper-level students. Instructor interviewees indicated some misunderstandings and limited views of the Writing Center’s mission. Nevertheless, a small number of participants in both groups spoke to a need for specialized tutoring in the Technical Writing course. In terms of feasibility, integration of online services for this course poses the greatest challenge because it relates to the amount of change needed to successfully integrate online tutoring or web resources into the curriculum. With some attention to how online writing labs and synchronous online tutoring can be an asset to teaching technical writing online, I argue that the pilot project described in this study is relatively feasible.

Writing academic papers continues to be a struggle for college students. Many universities provide tutoring services for a range of academic subjects including writing. Currently, there are few experimental studies to support the effectiveness of two frequently used tutoring methods: directive and nondirective tutoring. Based on existing knowledge about the acquisition of written language, this study aims to determine if directive (expert-directed) tutoring is more effective than nondirective (student-directed) tutoring in improving students' writing skills. In addition, this study sought to determine if changes in macrostructure and microstructure correlated to instructor assigned grades. Participants were recruited from undergraduate courses that included an initial paper and a revised final paper. Participants who chose 30-min of free tutoring were randomly assigned to one of the tutoring conditions: expert-directed (ED) or student-directed (SD). Participants who did not choose to receive tutoring were allocated to the control condition. There were 16 participants: ED group [n=7], SD group [n=7], and control group [n=2]. A descriptive analysis on measures of microstructure, paragraph structure, overall rating, and instructor assigned grades for the initial and final paper was conducted for 6 participants: ED group [n=2], SD group [n=2], and control group [n=2]. On measures of microstructure, the ED group decreased the average number of errors, the SD group maintained the same number of errors, and the control group increased the number of errors. Both the ED and SD tutoring groups decreased the average number of internal paragraph structure errors, while the control group maintained the same number of errors. All three groups received an increase in average overall rating; however, the control group received the smallest increase. All three groups received a comparable increase in average instructor assigned grade. The preliminary results suggest that tutoring is beneficial compared to no tutoring. Furthermore, there does not appear to be a relation between changes in the measures used in this study (microstructure, paragraph structure, overall rating) and instructor assigned grades. Further examination on whether directive tutoring is more effective than nondirective is required. The theories supporting directive tutoring (i.e. writing development, Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, learning theory) suggest that this method would be more effective than nondirective tutoring. In addition, research into the relation between grades and changes in macrostructure and microstructure is warranted.