ABSTRACT
E.T., as the electronic tutor at Utah State was called (Kinkead, 1987, p. 340), may have been the first writing center consultant to respond electronically to student writers as Hawisher, LeBlanc, Moran, and Selfe (1996) in Computers and the Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education, 1979-1994: A History pointed out: “To our knowledge, this article on e-mail or computer-mediated communication is the first article on this subject to appear in a mainstream composition journal” (p. 146). In “The Electronic Writing Tutor,” Kinkead (1988) acknowledges that “establishing a ‘wired’ writing center tutor may seem like a lot of work, but it taps an audience that might not ordinarily use the writing center because of time conflicts, distance problems, second language problems, or simply shyness” (p. 5). Kinkead concluded, “Although the electronic tutor cannot duplicate the comprehensiveness of the writing center tutorial or the value of face-toface dialogue, the service offers an additional way for helping writers write” (p. 5).
