Get Right Back Where We Started From

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PeerCentered started around 1998 as an online discussion group for peer tutors in writing centers to talk about issues that they found important.  These discussions took place on a MOO--an online textual world interface where people could text chat with each other.  The discussions were held weekly--and then monthly--and then finally sporadically, as it was seemingly difficult to coordinate the sessions with my schedule.

I was, however, going about it all wrong:  things like PeerCentered work best when peer tutors take the lead in it, and directors like me step away. Directors can provide venues and medium and opportunity for peer tutors, I think, but we should let peer tutors take it from there.

So, without further ado, PeerCentered announces the return of the regular live discussions.  This time, however, instead of a text chat, we're going to be using a Google Hangout that will allow for audio/visual and textual interactions.  Of course, such discussions won't happen spontaneously, and we will need to get a group of interested peer tutors to help initiate and lead the discussions.

This blog post, therefore, is call for moderators for a series of monthly PeerCentered discussions.  If you are interested in leading a discussion, please visit this Google form: http://goo.gl/forms/nlLrDwp1Im.  The form asks for your name, your email address, your institutional affiliation, whether or not you are an undergraduate peer tutor in writing, and what topics you would like to discuss during a session you moderate. One doesn't necessarily have to be a peer tutor to lead the discussions, but peer tutors will be given preference in moderator selection.  I would, therefore, ask directors to recruit from peer tutoring staff or students in peer tutoring classes.

When (and if) we get enough moderator volunteers, we'll move forward with determining dates. Once I get enough responses, I'll coordinate with the volunteers to have an open meeting to talk about the best times and dates for the live online discussions.

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