homework help tutors lounge

homework help tutors lounge

Effective Strategies for Homework Help in Tutors’ Lounge

1. Introduction to Tutors’ Lounge as a Homework Help Space

This study explores two research questions: (1) What strategies do undergraduate tutors use to render effective homework help in Tutors’ Lounge? (2) What other strategies or resources to help with homework are provided to students in Tutors’ Lounge? We address these questions through an analysis of audio recordings collected during 12 hours of Tutors’ Lounge sessions. We code instances in the recordings where tutors provide homework help, isolating the resources and strategies they use or suggest. Our findings highlight tutoring strategies intersectionality as a key feature for effective homework help in Tutors’ Lounge. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for academics and practitioners interested in creating social or informal learning spaces for undergraduate and pre-college students.

Tutors’ Lounge is a homework help space located in college dormitories on the campus of an urban, four-year public institution. It serves as a dedicated space for students from three nearby primary and secondary schools to interact with undergraduates in engineering over evening meals while getting help on their homework, particularly introductory mathematics and writing. Participation at Tutors’ Lounge is voluntary, and there is no cost or obligation for students. To encourage a wide range of students to develop an interest in engineering, we actively target and recruit participants from populations known to be underrepresented in the field. A consistent population of two to five undergraduate engineering students staff each session alongside a faculty member who serves as primary student liaison. Tutors are rewarded with gift certificate incentives based on the number of sessions they work in a given quarter. To provide Tutors’ Lounge as a service, our program partners with General Mills, which abandoned the use of the dormitory cafeteria space the program now occupies.

2. Best Practices for Tutors in Providing Homework Help

Effective Practices to Use in Homework Help: As with any environment where homework is the main component of interaction, establishing a rapport and understanding what exactly the student needs are important. A friendly initial greeting as the student enters can set the right frame of mind that the tutor is there to assist them, and not just solve problems. In reply to the essential question of the task, tutors using this practice can potentially scaffold the problem into more tangible chunks that the student can begin to unpack. In answering the question, the helper can ask a series of comprehension questions to get a better understanding of the student’s actual need. This can emphasize the student’s self-work and make the question feel less like an assessment and more about actively checking for learning and providing assistance. Tutors can use supportive questioning to help a student refine and even self-correct their understanding of a concept.

In the Tutors’ Lounge, homework help usually looks different from the other types of tutoring and interacting. It is a space sought out for help and not help and company, and much of the communication happens instantaneously, as students move from window to window, trying to see if a tutor can help with their questions. Additionally, homework can involve students moving in and out of different windows or the use of multiple websites and apps before they begin to understand their misconceptions. Tutors have to be able to meet students where they are, answer the question, and assist the student with whatever resource they are using to understand the reply. In the last year, the most common way to engage in homework help has often been through problems about basic algebra, topics of math learned in elementary and middle school. Homework help that also uses teachers’ lesson plans and tends to involve more pre and post-problems as big ideas are unpacked.

3. Utilizing Resources and Technology in Tutors’ Lounge for Enhanced Homework Support

At our initial meeting with the Tutors’ Lounge Coordinator, she expressed interest in scenarios or tutorials to help train tutors for the lounge. In her opinion, this could be a digital display. Potential clients also expressed an interest in online safety and other forms of assistance. We originally planned to conduct a session to ask focus-group style client feedback at one of our Tutors’ lounges during the semester (several sessions are held weekly), which are only for students who are in that meeting at the time. However, it was not possible to get the session approved in time to conduct it by September 30. We have no other data-gathering opportunities. In addition, since many of the sessions are held in the afternoon or on Friday, we believe students attending the meeting will be busy and not participate in a lengthy discussion or give us useful information.

Per symptom variables, research demonstrates that it is essential for college instructors to be able to identify almost twenty-five academic support elements. The necessity for tutoring is also ranked high in many studies where students have indicated the resources utilized to support their learning. There is an increasing interest in the impact of technology on teaching and learning in higher education. Our students have grown accustomed to using technological tools to support their learning. Much of the literature supports the continuation of students engaging with and benefiting from tutoring. Insofar as technology and students’ usage of such are components of the tutoring process, they should be carefully considered.

Background: The Tutors’ Lounge is seen as a place for dedicated homework support. It is expected that tutors use the tools available through the Center for Academic Enrichment to provide helpful resources and assistance during tutoring. HTML is recommended for guides for teaching tools and offenses. Since a substantial amount of homework support happens in the Tutors’ Lounge, it will be useful to have resources for tutoring available to tutors, perhaps in paper form and electronically.

4. Building Positive Relationships with Students in a Tutors’ Lounge Setting

It’s important for a student to feel comfortable around the tutors before going to the Tutors’ Lounge. When a main Tutors’ Lounge aide and multiple students report knowing each other on a more personal level, then students may adapt quicker to the Tutors’ Lounge setting. According to the TUTL instruction manual, in a one-on-one setting, rapport may need to be built quickly. Practitioners of academic coaching tend to stress increased academic support during the social adjustment period. Of the academic authors that we consulted, many scholars underscore the importance of establishing rapport with students. This can also set the tone for how a homework center is run. In addition, from input we gave to the undergraduate in charge of GANT, GANT attends to all students who say that they already know the Tutors’ Lounge Instructional Coordinator outside of Tutors’ Lounge.

Good tutors build relationships with students that encourage the development of intrinsic motivation. Trust is a critical part of that relationship. The more rapport that a tutor and student build among each other, the more productive tutoring time can be. Emphasizing personalized goals and progress monitoring may help in the coaching process that Tutors’ Lounge aides do as they help students. Good listener skills, such as asking clarifying and probing questions, may facilitate goal setting in a personalized way. Verbal support is another way that a tutor can make a student feel comfortable to improve their study habits which relates to Homework Help. Norming differences in opinion and setting up priorities for achieving task success may foster motivation and goal setting in an informal tutoring space. Most importantly, it is the quality of the tutor-tutee interaction that will make a difference in improving performance. We remark on these strategies to show that student learning has a complexity that presenters training our aides for the Tutors’ Lounge have already identified, the same complexity involved in Heppner’s strategies to teach problem-solving.

5. Measuring and Improving the Impact of Homework Help Services in Tutors’ Lounge

Feedback From Tutors. Outcomes: After each 6 week course is over, there will be an assessment that tests students on how well they mastered those topics. The score is an outcome measure. At this time, weekly attendance for Tutors is available through UMN reports. An outcome measurement would be to compare before and after grades in the course. In this case, we would want to control for students who attended Tutoring discovered in Best Reading as a Combo because the available tutors have greater content knowledge of both literature and writing.

Weekly Feedback From Instructor: Instructors will fill out a weekly learning analysis of each student for that week’s material and give it to Tutors. Tutors will then be able to use these forms to track student progress.

You might also measure your and their outcomes. Student Progress Tracking: All learners will be given a Series Objectives document listing the title of each course in the series. Each week, students will track the weekly performance/skill learned in the corresponding course. At the end of the series, students will review the series objectives document and summarize all the weekly performance/skills they learned in each of the courses.

If students are coming back for more than just the space, then the quality of the assistance and learning design also has to be evaluated, either with informal impression such as improving questions to tutors and students or more formal surveys.

To determine whether students make use of the space, you could keep track of how many students visit and use the space. To gauge whether students return, you could compare foot traffic in Tutors’ Lounge in the middle and latter half of the semester to see if a greater number of students use the space. If your library uses a card swipe to track door count, you may be able to determine the number of unique visitors.

Now that you have a homework space that has been designed with homework help in mind and have taken steps to put some key strategies into place, how will you assess if and how your space is affecting student engagement and academic success? Several evaluative measures can be employed.