A. Toth, Journal #3: Data

I found the 2001-2008 data pretty interesting.  The total number of appointments and the number of hours of tutoring have increased significantly from ‘01 to ‘08, but the number of clients has increased more moderately.  Obviously there was a big increase in hours when TJs took over some tutoring from the Bush Science Center.  (Math went from 68 hours in 06-07 to 168 in 07-08.)

Most clients in Fall 2008 had assignments due within a week, and “tomorrow” was pretty common.  I didn’t expect to many “within 2 hours” or “later today” because this would be cutting it pretty close.  It also makes sense because according to the data, most content tutoring is done to improve the clients’ understanding of the concepts.  They are usually not coming in just to put the finishing touches on assignments.  I expected more “later in the semester” assignments but I guess most people don’t plan that far ahead.

The recent data for tutor training hours shows that tutors spend the most time communicating with professors and others, which seems to make sense based on what I’ve seen.  Tutors also spend a lot of time preparing.  I would expect the amount of time a tutor spends reviewing course material should decrease as he/she gets more experience, but some review should always be necessary.

There were surprisingly few hours of tutoring for PHY, PHI, FRN, and several other subjects.  Maybe there are just fewer people studying them.  (There are certainly more people majoring in Chem. than physics.)  Also, maybe the classes that need a lot of tutoring hours are more often used to fulfill Gen. Ed. requirements. 

For my particular area, there seem to be a few people who come in regularly throughout the semester, but there are more who come in only once, twice, or a few times.  I found that most clients tend to see more than one tutor unless there is only one available for his/her specific course.  There are a lot of unscheduled sessions and group meetings.  Of course I expected to see significant demand for this because every now and then there are math projects and big tests.  Many clients seem to find brainstorming in small groups helpful for these things.

 

Journal #1

The post that I found the most interesting was the second one with John Folkerth.  The reason I found this one the most interesting is because of the fact that I had a client with pretty much the same situation.  Just like John, I sat next to my client, she brought all her materials and I was supposed to help her figure out some numbers for the presentation that she was going to have the next day.  She was very prepared; she was just having problems figuring out some of the formulas.  I was honest with her; I told her that I had not been through this because of the fact that I didn’t have to do this presentation.  My presentation was very different from hers.  Hers had to do with a lot of numbers, formulas, and calculating.  We figured everything out together, which is why John’s case reminds me of my session.  The whole session took an hour.  It was the longest session I have had so far this semester.  She was very happy with the results and I’m positive that she was going to do well in her presentation.  

            All these posts remind me of the training sessions we had.  The tutors did the right things by leading the students to their answers and not telling them the answer.  The tutors also reviewed with them at the end of the sessions to make sure that they had taken in all the information.  Most of the clients were different, some were really quiet like in Julia Humphrey’s case, and some thought out loud like in Margaux’s session.  This is something that we were taught at the training and we can never forget.  Students are different people and they learn in different ways.  We as tutors have to adapt to the situation. 

 

Journal #1- Kevin Krughoff

One thing that resonated with me very quickly when reading the observations was the varying degrees of interaction and active participation that you have amongst the clientelele.  In other words, some clients will come in and just say something like, “I just don’t get it” (referring to the entire chapter), haven’t read the chapter, and have no test/quiz questions or problems out of the book to work on.  When asked what specifically is confusing, its hard to know how to guide the session when you get an answer like, “just… everything, I can’t get this stuff.”  Trying to calm down and pace clients like how Aimee did is something I don’t believe I’ve experienced yet, but I feel like I would much rather that be the case than having to try and teach a client an entire chapter and improvise a lesson plan.   And this is not always the case, nor is it even the majority of the cases I’ve seen, but I’m coming to terms with how students view the session… as if I’m going to have some sort of action plan waiting to go over with them when they get here.  When I get more proactive clients, on the other hand, its much more enjoyable.  In these cases I can identify what the problem is, where the client went wrong, explain it (perhaps in several different ways), and then do some practice problems, before finally asking the client to repeat the whole process back to me.  The way Grace would provide hints and recognize the significance of the struggle reminds me of my own technique (see Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development); its important to gradually wean a client off of advice/hints over the course of the session to make sure s/he can do it in a testing situation.

 

CHM/BIO specialty training Wed. 2/28 5:30-6:30 (make up on FR @12)

As the new CHM and BIO tutors know, this Wednesday (Jan. 28)  is the “specialty” training for CHM tutors.  I wanted some returning tutors to come as well, and Sameera suggested all BIO tutors come as well.  Some of you BIO folks tutor CHM, and all of you have taken both…

New CHM and SCI tutors, Please look overthese before you come.  Returning tutors, remind yourself?

These are all in our blog, sidebar.   SC at the beginning means Science

1.   SC: Approaches to Biology Teaching/Learning

Learning Styles in Science:

Approaches to Biology Teaching and Learning: Learning Styles and the Problem of Instructional Selection—Engaging All Students in Science Courses

This article looks at science instruction through three lenses: the VARK, Multiple Intelligences, and Dimensions of Learning Styles in Science (Felder).    You know the VARK.  Felder’s instrument teases out these aspects: (excerpt from article)

Felder and Silverman propose four dimensions of student learning styles, each of which relates to students’ preferred modes for receiving information, including 1) the type of information they receive (sensory or intuitive), 2) the modality in which they receive it (visual or verbal), 3) the process by which they receive it (actively or reflectively), and 4) the order in which they receive it (sequentially or globally). These dimensions are useful in considering the diversity of learning styles and how teaching strategies in science classrooms do or do not regularly provide access to learning for these different types of students.

#2 . New tutors (and returning ones if you haven’t ever done this before…it’s interesting.  Go to this link and take Felder’s inventory.

SC: Learning through Felder’s styles lens

Do the 44-question questionnaire, then read the descriptions. I’ll give you a copy of the descriptions on Wednesday.  Bring your scores.

^{Q= Quantitative}

3.   Q: using writing (board/forms/notecards) to learn math

^{Those of you helping with problem-solving (I guess more in CHM 120?) can look at this article (in a learning center newsletter, a summary. If it’s interesting, you can download the MSWord full-version at the end of the article).}

^{See you new tutors on Wed.  And as many returning ones as can make it, to help new folks…and have some cheese & crackers and nuts and more…. (and some pay for those of you who are not in the TPJ 110 course).}

 

Journal 3 – PEP Academics

“Don’t take absences so seriously. If a student doesn’t come to class it will show! They will fail themselves if too many are missed.”

I find this to be completely true.  As a student, I despise the fact that some professors assign reading to the class, and then lecture in the next class as though none of the students read the material.   Students who both read the material and attend the lecture have the benefit of dual exposure to the material but in my personal opinion, the purpose of a class discussion on a topic that has already been read should be supplemental.  The discussion should analyze and delve deeper into the material rather than summarizing the text for those that did not bother to read.  Classes in which this is the case, in order to do well, a student must both read the text and attend class.  However, many classes are of the first type and offer no additional inisght into material.  If a student already has a full understanding of the text, it does not make sense in my mind to enforce a policy by which they are required to “learn” the material twice.  It baffles me that students who completely understand material could be given a grade similar to those who did not read or understand simply due to attendance.  If professors continue to summarize the texts, while there should be an attendance policy in place in order to prevent students from simply never coming, it should be flexible and to an extent, biased towards those who obviously understand the material.  However, the attendance policy is not what is at fault, the teaching style is what should in fact be remedied.

Another topic of hot debate among the suggestions is the foreign language department/requirement.  Some students ask for more funding and more opportunity to take classes whereas others simply want the requirement removed.  I tend to agree with an increase in funding and maintaining the reuirement.  A big portion of students who complain about foreign language requirements are most likely those who have been “burned” by the current situation.  A personal example:  I am currently in Japanese 101 with the intention of taking Japanese 102 this upcoming semester.  However, I also intend on taking advantage of the school’s study abroad program which will preclude me from taking Japanese 201 the fall of 2009.  Unfortunately, 201 is only offered in the fall therefore I will have to wait until the fall of 2010 before I am able to finish my foreign language requirement.  This means there will be a year of downtime between the classes in which I will most likely be forgetting a great deal of material.  For many students, who haven’t the time or inclination to continue studying independantly, this would be a huge handicap.  Another personal problem I have experienced with the foreign language department is that there is only one teacher available for my language of choice.  If a student has an issue with a professor or even learns in a style which they don’t necessarily teach well towards, that student will have significantly more difficulty and also does not get the advantage of hearing different dialects and seeing different teaching methods.  Therefore, it makes sense to me to continue to require a foreign language becuase it is an important part of education, especially a liberal arts one, but to make efforts to improve the quality of the languages being taught.

 

Journal 2 – Dealing with Difficulty

It is really difficult to pinpoint a “difficult” client because I had very few.  My most challenging client is easier to pinpoint because of repeated visits.  The main problem with this client was not that he was unwilling to learn or hostile towards me in any way.  His difficulty was that he had a very difficult time learning and it was therefore very frustrating to try to tutor him.  He would visit at least once per week and would have forgotten almost everything that we had gone over in previous sessions.  This repeated occurance was incredibly frustrating to me and as supportive and friendly as I was to this client, it seemed as though my suggestions to work on the material, review past exercises, and work on additional problems either were either being ignored or were as inaffective at helping him to retain material as our sessions seemed to be.  One key element in tutoring is to ensure that you are not doing their work for him but instead are helping them through the work.  I would encourage him to understand the process by asking questions as we went along, only to look up, and see a completely vacant look on his face followed by a string of completely off base guesses despite the fact that we had done a problem almnost exactly the same together moments before.

The other most difficult session I had was also my fault.  A partnership came to me for help on a project.   The most frustrating thing to me was that they showed me the problem they had been having and that I had absolutely no idea how to solve their problem.  I tinkered and tried different things for the length of the session but it was essentially a waste of a half hour both for me and for the client.   As a tutor, the service that we offer is our knowledge and it is so dissapointing to me when I feel like a client has come to me and I just do not know enough to help them.

 

Journal 1

The fourth step of the tutoring process is “Identify the thought process” which, in computer science can be amazingly difficult. The content we type into a page on a laptop can be instantly decoded into a step by step process by the computer but for students, it can be much harder. The first obstacle is that as with any field computer science has its own unique vocabulary which students have to comprehend before a tutor can really even explain things effectively. Second, in my personal opinion there is a certain logic unique to computer science which for me and others I’ve talked to came as a sort of “Eureka!” moment and causing this to happen for a student is no easy task. We can only hope that the student has some basic grasp of how problems should be approached in the right way. The right, and really only way for beginning computer science is to look at a problem in the way the computer does, line by line in a direct order. I like to start by looking at what my client has written thus far towards solving a problem so I can identify the steps they tried to take. One problem I faced was that my client would come in with a problem, no direction, and no visible prior thought, and just say “help me”.

As for Step 5, this has always been the easiest step for me. My primary client persistently comes in with an assignment or problem he would like to work on or receive help with. The problem arises when we reach step 6 and actually go to solve the problem. My biggest frustration is that when we go to solve the problem, I realize that he does not understand any of the fundamentals needed to solve the problem correctly. At which point it really becomes necessary to provide at least a rudimentary explanation of the concept so you can make some headway in solving the problem. With one of my clients it is incredibly difficult because there such huge gaps in this person’s knowledge that it is very difficult to explain anything new or make any forward progress.

Step 7 and 8 also are very frustrating for me. My client is very negative and while at the time of the appointment, he is capable of explaining the steps that we went through, he has difficulty using and applying that knowledge for other problems even though I tend to skim over the approaches that should be tried for problems we were not able to get to in the session. However, my client is very negative about his future expectations, and so, when he is summarizing, he states that he understands a problem but is never very confident about the future problems.

 

Journal 3

I strongly disagree with one of the wishes that a peer educator poster for the future of Rollins and that is: for the college to get rid of the foreign language requirement. As an International Relations/French major and a foreigner, I believe that in today’s world one cannot go far in life without being familiar with other cultures and at least having an idea of what is to learn and be able to speak other languages. Perhaps the foreign language requirement will not motivate a student to learn a foreign language, but it will at least teach him enough to get by in another country for a short period of time, because most countries in the world do not hold English as their official language. The comment, futhermore, frustrated me because I think that anyone who chose Rollins as their college should uphold its mission, which is to become a global citizen. The main way to become a global citizen is to acquire the knowledge of at least one foreign language. Finally, one who does not try to explore other’s cultures and languages will always stay a narrow-minded human being.

 

Journal 3 option 2

I agree that absences should not be taken as seriously as they currently are. The small community-style classes that Rollins has to offer are valuable and hard to come by in today’s university system. I don’t understand why people wouldn’t want to capitalize on the benefits and personal attention of professors who can actually learn names and differentiate between different students’ personalities. But I do think that some of the absence policies are unnecessarily extreme. I had one class where your letter grade dropped for every absence after the first one. That is too much. If a student is able to actively participate inside the classroom and with strong outside assignments without perfect attendance, that should be to their credit.

I do not think that graduation from Rollins should require a global responsibility course. I know that Rollins prides itself on producing responsible leaders and global citizens but not all of its students share these same values. I am not looking to become a global citizen. Globalization is violent, corrosive to small communities and dependent on exploitation. Other nations and people would be best served if the “developed” world kept as far away from them as possible. Maybe Rollins should offer a course to its graduated that taught them something about resource exploitation under the guise of 3^rd world aid.

 

Journal 1: Tutor Cycle

Since my experiences in tutoring this semester have been limited, I will try to remember specific instances related to steps 4-8 of the tutor cycle and incorporate them into a general reflection of my sessions.

Step 4: Identify thought processes

This is the step that I think I need to work the most on. I do ask generally how the student feels about the material being covered in class.  However, I don’t usually spend a lot of time trying to figure out how the person is thinking about the subject other than through observations during the actual session. I always ask what the client would like to cover and needs work on. But asking a client to “tell me what you know” probably would be more useful since they don’t always know that they don’t really know a concept. As a tutor, I would know what is important for them to understand, so I could fill in the gaps after hearing them explain the subject themselves.  For example, while tutoring for Arabic, I realized that the clients might not know how to tell the difference between the Arabic equivalent of “Y” and the same letter used as a vowel to create the long “E” sound… so I explained to them how I was able to tell the difference.

Step 5: Set an Agenda

I agree with what an earlier tutor had said about how going off on tangents can sometimes be helpful. I do try to ask the client what specific things he or she would like to cover during the session; noting this down helps to ensure that you make the most of your time with your client. However, once you actually start talking about the concepts, it sometimes becomes apparent that there are other aspects of this or related ideas that are unclear. These are also important to address- the key is balancing them so that you don’t spend the entire time on stray information and never actually get to the questions at hand.

Step 6: Address the task

When it comes to actually addressing the task at hand, I like to try and talk the client through his or her grammar/writing questions.  After answering those, I guide them through some practice application of the concepts.  The client is asked to look through and find things in their book and/or notes as much as possible instead of me always simply providing the answer.  This is hard to do though, when the client is unprepared.

Steps 7 and 8: Have the client summarize the content and process

I usually do this both throughout the session and at the end, by asking the client to repeat in his or her own words the concepts that we have just gone over. Like Susie had written, a good way to do this  (and remind yourself to do it) is to use the tutoring forms:  ask the client at the end to “remind” you what you went over for the past half hour so that you could write it down on the tutoring forms… and how it was done so that the method can be written down in the “what to do next” section. Once again, I also do this during the course of the session as the processes are being practically applied, so that I can be sure the client understands what he or she is doing, and why.

 

Journal 2 Fuller

I had a client once who came in asking about negative and affirmative commands. This is something I have never done. I don’t know how it happened that my review of elementary Spanish class skipped over it, but when he asked about it, I drew a complete blank. Even looking at his notes did not ring a bell. I was embarrassed but not defeated. I was completely honest about my inexperience and I gave him a choice between trying to reschedule with another tutor or trying to figure it out together. He chose the latter and so we went to the book. After looking over the charts offered there for about 10 minutes we seemed to have it. We had success with some of the exercises and he left looking uncertain but still better than when he came in.

On another occasion I had a client who was repeatedly forgetting about appointments. I would call 15 minutes into our scheduled time to remind him and sometimes he would show up, but sometimes he wouldn’t. After the fourth time this happened I called and said that I could not be his tutor anymore. He had been warned the previous two times and since he obviously did not value our time together I wanted to leave the slot open for other students who needed help.

 

Journal 1 Fuller

Identify the thought process

It’s really important that I first figure out whether my client is a visual or an auditory learner. I ask the student to tell me what they remember about the topic that they want to discuss that day (usually it’s verb conjugations in a particular tense). Then I ask what they thought about to recall those rules…notes, the book or the teacher’s voice. This way I know whether to conduct the session with verbal pneumonic devices or drawings.

Set an agenda

At the beginning of the session I ask what the student would like to get done that day. If there is a specific assignment, I wait until we have done about 10 minutes of work and then use the speed at which we have been working at to judge whether or not finishing is a realistic expectation. If it is not, we go through and identify key ideas until the student is confident that he/she will be able to complete the rest on their own.

Address the task

It usually takes me about 5 minutes to get fully into the mindset of whatever it is we are doing. During this time I ask the student to take my answers / recommendations cautiously. This encourages both of us to lend our full attention to the material. After that, we take turns answering questions or correcting mistakes, explaining our reasoning each time.

Summarize the content

Towards the end of the meeting we go back through the main ideas as I fill out the tutoring sheet. I say what I am writing out loud and elaborate where it is necessary. I ask the student what he/she remembers as well and we make connections where we can.

Summarize the process

This gets taken care of in the previous step.

 

Journal 2

I haven’t had many (if any) appointments after that particular meeting, since most of my clients decided to drop out of the class. I never really had a hard time saying no. In most cases it wasn’t necessary. Because I was helping them with basic concepts, if they didn’t understand it and it wasn’t clear in the book (as was sometimes the case), I would just tell them what they needed to know. They never asked me to actually do assignments for them, and really the most common task I had was to help them come up with strategies for themselves to memorize important things like declension case endings and how to conjugate verbs.

I rarely had any negativity, either. One client repeatedly said that she was going to fail the exam she was preparing for, but all I did was reassure her that she understood more than she thought she did (which was true). After a while working on strategies, we called it a day, and she took the test.  She ended up doing alright. I think she said she got a B-, but she stayed in the class and is doing fine.

 

Journal 1

Step 4: Identify Thought Processes

Usually I figure out my client’s way of thinking just by asking them what problem’s they’re having with the class. The items they identify and, more importantly how they bring them up, clue me in to how they operate. For instance, if they say “Delensions are stupid. There’s no point to them!” I can tell that they are impatient, and that they want everything they learn to fit into a rational system.

Step 5: Set an agenda

In this example, I would suggest we talk about what declensions are, how many there are (knowing that there are only 5 they will ever need to know sometimes reassures them), and why Latin has them.

Step 6: Address the Task

The Latin textbook doesn’t explain the purpose of declensions very well, so usually I would point out first that declensions exist to help us, the people learning Latin as a foreign language. The Romans didn’t think of their language in this way. Instead, translators came up with this concept to make things easier. This might annoy my hypothetical client who wants everything to fit right and make sense, but then I would explain that that is precisely what declensions do. They let us categorize nouns so that we can know something about them before we even encounter them in a Latin reading. Usually by now the client would be more receptive, and then we could look at what the declensions are, and come up with strategies to memorize them.

Step 7: Summarize the Content

For this, I simply have the client explain to me what they now know. for instance, I would have my client explain what a declension is and what the different cases signify (since these usually go together)

Step 8: Summarize the Process

In this case, the client and I would have come up with ways to remember the specific case endings in whatever declension(s) we were studying, so I would have her tell me what strategies she will use for the future.

 

Journal #3 (choice 2)

Here are some suggestions I don’t agree with:

“More things like the colloquy. WPInstitutes, debates, discussions, lectures, forums” — This is expensive, and a waste of the money I pay to come here. Sure, it’s cool that Salman Rushdie came to my college, but at what cost? Rollins is not running a tight ship around here, and I resent that some of the money they’re throwing around was mine. It seems like Rollins is way too focused on this image readjustment kick.

“tutors living in every residence hall” This seems like a good idea, at first, but I don’t think that struggling students would really be any more likely to see a tutor just because they live in their residence hall.

Here are some I agree with:

“A language Dorm for upperclassmen” — Some languages are tough enough to learn without distractions. Living with others, all of whom are speaking the language you are trying to learn, can only improve the learning experience. The logistics would be tough, but I think Rollins can figure it out.

“Faculty needs to get more support and get involved with activities on campus” — I don’t know what the first par tof this means, but I do think that professors should try to come to more student events (like the election party, for instance). I don’t think Rollins should set a quota or anything, but I do think that their attendance should be strongly encouraged.