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Asynchronous multimodal tutoring transforms the writing center experience into a kairotic space where neurodivergent tutors and students coconstruct rhetorical exchange on their own terms.
“I really like meeting with you, but when we’re done, I feel like I need a nap.” So said my student about midway through our weekly Zoom tutoring session. I appreciated the admission and, appropriate to the mechanics of conversation, shared my response: “Me too.” As an autistic writing center tutor and administrator, I find Zoom sessions exhausting—trying to mask (with camera on) my feelings of awkwardness every time my mouth stumbles over syllables or my neurons tangle, trapping a target word so its journey to my oral-motor pathway can’t even begin. The anxiety of actively reading and orally responding to writing while someone waits on the other side of the screen intensifies my cognitive load, stifling words and thoughts even further.
I don’t have the same trouble when I type. I’d rather tutor asynchronously, safe on my side of the screen, all day long. However, because of my educational background in learning disabilities, I find myself working most often with neurodivergent student writers who may receive information less efficiently through text-only methods. Many need to hear explanations, speak questions, see color and shape, and interact spatially with language concepts—even as some of them shrink away from Zoom as much as I do. Of course, as we fret over spoken exchange and the spotlight of “camera on,” those students and I acknowledge that the learning in which we so desperately wish to engage is innately a conversation—a process of collaboration (Bruffee, 1984; Lunsford, 1991)—that occurs, objectively, in real time.
The Normative Pressure of Real Time
Subjectively, a belief persists that learning occurs best in spontaneous and linear real time (Fleming, 2020; Yergeau et al., 2013). Normative pressure perhaps drives the perception, documented by Worm (2020), that asynchronous interactions are limiting, or of secondary quality, compared to those occurring within the synchronous learning space. When the writing center infrastructure defines the asynchronous space as time delayed/text only and the synchronous space as spontaneous/talk heavy, it bolsters the supposition that students benefit more from synchronous interaction. Through such assumptions, we reproduce what Price, in Yergeau et al. (2013), asserted as the logic of absence: If an infrastructure “assume[s]an audience of normate bodyminds, the creators of that infrastructure therefore declare certain other bodyminds (e.g., disabled ones) not present—even if such bodies are physically present” (Toward an Ethical Infrastructure section). As such, neurodivergent bodyminds—those who may engage with and perceive time and social interactions differently—are imagined as peripheral to the norms of tutoring, whether as tutor or tutee in the exchange.
Neurodivergent bodyminds are imagined as peripheral to the norms of tutoring—whether as tutor or tutee.
Asynchrony as a Kairotic Space
Such normative framing ignores a growing body of research that has demonstrated asynchronous environments can function as dynamic, flexible, and collaborative sites of tutoring—especially for marginalized learners. Scholars have argued that asynchronous settings increase access by offering students more control over their use of time and learning processes (Barron et al., 2023; Mick & Middlebrook, 2015). This is especially true in online writing settings when tutors integrate screen capture (Fleming, 2020; Grigoryan, 2017) and other multimodal technologies like VoiceThread (Lee & Michelini, 2025). Multimodal work is not just about adding audio or color; it is about making those modes available for learners to navigate, repeat, skip, remix, and remediate as they construct meaning and choose how to respond in kind.
Accordingly, Price has noted that telepresence, not just physical presence, can generate kairotic spaces, described as informal, often unnoticed sites where spontaneity and high-impact interaction shape who participates in rhetoric and academic life (Yergeau et al., 2013). For neurodivergent students, asynchronous writing tutoring activated through multimodal strategies becomes a transformative kairotic space, where tutors provide timely, needs-aligned feedback (Fleming, 2020) that invites learners to consider and defend what they have written and why (Busekrus, 2017). In this perspective, kairos is not limited to engaging in Socratic questioning at rapid pace in a synchronous session; instead, it’s about crafting expansive feedback that meets students at the right moment, in the right mode, and at a meter that honors both participants’ processing and communication needs while minimizing anxiety and fatigue.
Multimodal Layering and Coconstruction
Kairos becomes actionable in the asynchronous space through multimodality as tutors and students retain agency to move through on their own terms. In Yergeau et al. (2013), Kerschbaum insisted that “multimodality should take up how texts are designed as well as how they can be modified by users,” with “redundancy across multiple channels” promoting flexible use (Modality section). Asynchronous screen-capture videos, layered with written comments and visual organizers, unfold in real time for the tutor composing the feedback and the student experiencing it; however, that real time is stretchable, replayable, and negotiable. When a tutor pairs a several-minute screencast with comments in a paper, students find multiple entry points to the academic conversation and can decide where and how long to linger.
Exemplar in Practice
See how multimodal feedback supports coconstruction:
- Word document with comments: Explore the written feedback that accompanies the video.
- Instructional video walkthrough: Watch how a short screencast guides the student through the document.
Notably, in multimodal asynchronous tutoring, neither the tutor’s output nor the student’s navigation of it are independent constructions. A less explored but crucial implication of Price’s work is that kairotic spaces are not simply provided to participants; they are enacted socially, through interaction (Yergeau et al., 2013). Tutors design asynchronous multimodal feedback to facilitate coconstruction—layering textual and audiovisual modes while sharing and redistributing time and control. These contexts explicitly invite neurodivergent tutors and students to forge the pace, path, and focus of the tutoring encounter together.
To ensure multimodal praxis facilitates bidirectional conversation instead of top-down instruction, the asynchronous space must encourage recursive interaction. In practice, the entry points provided by screencasts and visual organizers serve as doorways to a revised parlor of conversation for student rebuttal and clarification. Tutors, responding to students’ initial outreach, invite tutees to continue the exchange via email, the Reply function in digital margins, their own screencast videos, or voice memos. Beyond simply acknowledging receipt, students find space to ask follow-up questions, defend rhetorical choices, or seek deeper discussion. Rather than bypassing Socratic questioning, asynchrony allows responses to simmer. The tutor’s conceptual question, delivered through text or audio/video, provides a neurodivergent learner beneficial wait time to process, reflect, and respond without the pressure of an expectant gaze. This iterative loop, in which students choose the mode of response, transforms the tutorial from a static, one-sided product into a living, negotiated conversation.
Multimodal asynchronous tutoring allows tutor and student to coconstruct the learning space, rather than just adapting themselves to it.
Easing the barriers posed by Zoom interactions, multimodal asynchronous tutoring allows tutor and student to fully participate in and more enthusiastically coconstruct the learning space, rather than just adapting themselves to it. These strategies ground human-centered, social-justice-oriented praxis, fostering empowered access to rhetorical engagement and collaborative social interaction. When we frame asynchronous multimodal feedback not as a secondary or backup plan but as a primary, thoughtfully designed option, writing centers and other Computers and Writing contexts can redistribute who experiences collaborative learning as energizing instead of depleting, invitational instead of overwhelming. For many neurodivergent tutors and students, such redistribution of time, mode, and agency facilitates the learning conversation within a truly coconstructed space—without making us feel like we need a nap afterward.
References
Barron, K. L., Warrender-Hill, K., Buckner, S. W., & Ready, P. Z. (2023). Expanding writing center space-time: Tutoring modality, access, and equity. The Peer Review, 7(1). https://thepeerreview-iwca.org/issues/issue-7-1-featured-issue-reinvestigate-the-commonplaces-in-writing-centers/expanding-writing-center-space-time-tutoring-modality-access-and-equity/
Bruffee, K. A. (1984). Collaborative learning and the “conversation of mankind.” College English, 46(7), 635–652. https://doi.org/10.2307/376924
Busekrus, E. (2017). Kairotic situations: A spatial rethinking of the Burkean parlor in the writing center. Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, 14(2), 15–20. https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/067a3e21-d41d-422d-8895-0f4dcb9e77fd/content
Fleming, A. M. (2020). Where disability justice resides: Building ethical asynchronous tutor feedback practices within the center. The Peer Review, 4(2). https://thepeerreview-iwca.org/issues/issue-4-2/where-disability-justice-resides-building-ethical-asynchronous-tutor-feedback-practices-within-the-center/
Grigoryan, A. (2017). Audiovisual commentary as a way to reduce transactional distance and increase teaching presence in online writing: Student perceptions and preferences. Journal of Response to Writing, 3(1), 83–128. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/journalrw/vol3/iss1/5/
Lee, S., & Michelini, A. (2025) Beyond convenience: A mixed-methods study of asynchronous multimodal tutoring and its impact on understanding and connection. The Writing Center Journal, 43(1), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.7771/2832-9414.2034
Lunsford, A. A. (1991). Collaboration, control, and the idea of a writing center. The Writing Center Journal, 12(1), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.7771/2832-9414.1252
Mick, C. S., & Middlebrook, G. (2015). Asynchronous and synchronous modalities. In B. L. Hewitt & K. E. DePew (Eds.), Foundational practices on online writing instruction. The WAC Clearinghouse; Parlor Press.
Worm, A. (2020). Believing in the online writing center. The Writing Center Journal, 38(1–2), Article 10. https://doi.org/10.7771/2832-9414.1926
Yergeau, M. R., Brewer, E., Kerschbaum, S., Oswal, S., Price, M., Salvo, M., Selfe, C., and Howes, F. (2013). Multimodality in motion: Disability and kairotic Spaces. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 18(1). http://www.technorhetoric.net/18.1/coverweb/yergeau-et-al/index.html
