More Modes, More Problems Examining Tutor Education in Multimodal Writing Centers

Several waves of calls for writing centers to address digital and multimodal texts exist, dating back to the 1980s. While these conversations gained momentum at the turn of the century with the popularization of multiliteracy centers and scholarship supporting them, most of the scholarship in this area focuses exclusively on individualized, practitioner inquiry. This dissertation embraces a descriptive methodology by mixing qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection to gain a more complete view of the practices currently in place to educate tutors in a wide variety of academic support structures so they can assist with digital multimodal compositions. Chapter 1 provides both the context for this study and a literature review. In this chapter three key terms— multimodal writing center, digital multimodal composition, and tutor education— are all given context and working definitions. After introducing these key terms and their associated definitions, this study poses the three main research questions that drive the descriptive inquiry into tutor education methods detailed throughout the remainder of this study. After introducing and defining the key concepts and questions informing this study in the first chapter, Chapter 2 provides an explanation and rationale for the methods employed in this study. This study utilizes a nationwide survey and a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with the director, a more experienced tutor, and a less experienced tutor at three different targeted locations— Northern University, Southern University, Western University. This chapter also details the development of and final contents for the coding scheme employed throughout this study. Chapter 3 presents the results from the survey and interview responses. This chapter begins by discussing the survey responses. Next, the results are presented and sample responses are provided for each interview participant at the targeted locations, for all of the codes identified in the interviews, in the order of most-frequently used codes to least-frequently. Chapter 4 looks more closely at the responses across the interviews and case studies. This chapter is structured around the 3 main questions informing this study, broken into 6 overall answers. The answers to these questions lead to the development of an initial framework for describing the landscape of tutor education for assisting with digital multimodal compositions that I call the “AAA Framework.” The final chapter of this dissertation— Chapter 5— outlines the implications and limitations of this study, and the need to continue exploring the ways tutor education for digital multimodal compositions is being conducted, so as to continue (re)shaping the framework developed in response to the data collected in this study.