Revised Reseach Plan

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
To describe how the amount of time spent on off-topic conversation affects the student’s outcome in terms of how much they feel they’ve learned/are taking away with them.
DETAILED STATEMENT OF MY RESEARCH QUESTION
How does the amount of time spent on personal information affect the session?How do students feel about the amount of time spent on each aspect?
LIST OF THE INFORMATION I NEED TO GATHER
I will need students who don’t know their tutors, who do know their tutors, and a minute by minute breakdown of what they discuss (track personal conversation vs. on-topic conversation)
PLANS FOR GATHERING YOUR INFORMATION
I will need to give them evaluation forms after the sessions to find out if they feel they’ve learned nothing/something/a lot, etc. I need to be sure to find out how often they’ve met, for how long, and try to ascertain how well they know each other from their conversation. In doing my minutes of the session, I need to be very certain about looking for eye contact, off-topic conversation, ability to talking easily with each other, etc. I will also add questions to the post session questionnaire, including: “Have you worked with this tutor before? If so, how many times?”“How much time do you feel you spent on topic, discussing your paper, vs. how much time you spent discussing other topics (in minutes)?”“Would you have preferred more or less time on topic vs. off-topic discussion, how much, and why?”
PRELIMINARY LIST OF SOURCES
Bridgeport University Tutoring Guidelines
http://www.bridgeport.edu/pages/5072.asp
Their rules for tutoring specifically says to speak as little as possible off topic, emphasizing the word “brief” as the guideline for how much time should be spent talking personal, not school assignment related
Tutoring Matters
http://books.google.com/books?id=wI4qh-eteQ4C&pg=RA1-PA126&dq=tutoring+personal+conversation#PRA1-PA127,M1
Book says that opening up a conversation, especially when there is a race, gender, class, or background difference can help get the dialogue going and make the communications between the two people more efficient.
Building Successful Student-Tutor Relationships
http://www.nationalserviceresources.org/practices/17487
Site says that by establishing a relationship, students and tutors are more effective.
“The Effects of Motivation and Anxiety on Students’ Use of Instructor Comments”
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/19/69/31.pdf
This site draws a comparison between student anxiety and outcome of tutoring session. By drawing a comparison, using the above link and this one, I will attempt to draw a conclusion saying students whose apprehension was assuaged by a stronger tutor-student relationship are likely to do better.
*LONGMAN – Murphy article, about Freud in the writing center.
*First 5 minutes