Application for CAITL Faculty Fellowship Fall 2004

Online Tutor Training: A Centralized Approach to Strengthening the Academic Success Labs at RVCC

Jacqueline Fesq, Professor of Mathematics

Summary
The purpose of this Fellowship is to develop an online tutor-training course using the same WebCT platform currently employed by our credit online courses. This is not meant to be an academic, “for-credit” course, but rather a method of centralizing and improving our tutor-training program here at RVCC.

Background
Tutors, both peer and professional, are currently employed in the Math Lab, the Writing Center, and elsewhere on campus for the purpose of helping students acquire the skills needed to be successful in their academic courses. Proper training of these tutors is essential for the following reasons:
  • Tutors need to be competent in the subject area
  • Tutors need to be aware of college policies and lab-specific policies
  • Tutors need to be aware of any department policies that impact the appropriate lab
  • Tutors need training in lab-specific software (Example: In the math lab alone, at least 4 different types of software packages are used)
  • Tutors need training on specific equipment, such as graphing calculators
  • Tutors need to know how much and what kind of help to give students
  • Tutors need training on the different types of learning styles and how to accommodate students with these different styles
  • Tutors should get some training on how to work with students with identified learning disabilities
At the present time, tutor training at RVCC is minimal, sporadic, and not centralized; that is, it is not supervised by any one person. I believe our training procedures can be improved and I believe that a required online “course” would help to remedy this situation.

Proposal
  1. Research: While at the 2004 League of Innovation Conference in San Francisco, I attended a session on Online Tutor Training given by Grossmont College in California. I spoke with Andrea Garzanelli, their Instructional Design Technology Specialist, about the feasibility of RVCC developing such a course. She was very encouraging and has since allowed me “access” into their course as a guest. My plan is to use the Grossmont course as a model for RVCC tutor training.
  2. Resources: Within the Math Department, I’ve developed the Statistics II course and the Algebra Mods. However, I have not yet developed an online course, nor have I developed any course that was interdisciplinary. Because tutoring encompasses all aspects of the college, I will work with a variety of people/departments in order to collect the information that needs to be included in the course. In particular, I plan to work collaboratively with Marion Eberly, Cathy Doyle, the current academic lab managers, the Academic Departments (especially Math and English), Human Resources and current tutors to determine the proper topics for inclusion. If we are awarded the Title III Grant, I will coordinate the course development with the tutor-training components written into the grant. In addition, I will need to work with Holly Smythe for the online components of the course.
  3. Course structure: I envision this course to be an “umbrella” for all tutors, regardless of their discipline. Because the course is online, training can take place at any time freeing the lab managers from providing individual face-to-face training each time a new tutor is hired. It will contain an information section for all tutors and then branch into the specific lab/subject information. Each lab manager (or tutor manager) will act as the “instructor” for the course to ensure that the prospective tutor has completed the training and to ensure the course is updated each semester. (This “instructor” is a title only, not to be confused with the instructor of a credit course.) An online “quiz” will be required at the end of the training to determine if the tutor has successfully completed the training. Ideally, this course will be required for all tutors beginning in Spring 2005. Tutors will get paid up to 3 working hours to take and complete the course. (This is only my suggestion and the pay issue is ultimately out of my control.)

Assessment
Tutor training is often considered a secondary issue of the teaching and learning process. We tend to focus solely on the teacher/student relationship and when this needs help, tutoring steps in. However, RVCC has never taken any major steps to develop tutor/student relationships. Yes, we try to hire good students as tutors, but most of their training is “on-the-job” and “learn-by-experience”. While this isn’t necessarily bad, it can certainly be improved. As far as I know, we have not yet undertaken any measurement of student learning related to tutoring other than collection of data from the labs (number of tutoring hours, number of students tutored, etc.). It is my hope that an online training course will help to improve tutor productivity and effectiveness. It is possible to collect data on pre-training tutor performance in Fall 2004 and then post-training performance in Spring 2005 for comparison purposes. Qualitative data will also be collected from the lab managers to assess the “ease” in which new tutors were acclimated to their jobs.

Possible future assessment: Assessment of student learning via grades and lab-use is entirely possible if 1) we adopt computer software designed to track students in the labs and 2) all students are issued ID cards with swipe-able bar codes. Such software exists (see Red Canyon Systems at http://www.redcanyon.com) and can be integrated with BANNER to allow analysis between lab use and academic success. However, this is beyond the scope of my CAITL proposal. I mention it because lab-tracking software and bar-coded ID cards allow for a viable method of assessment for all components of academic labs, including tutoring. I believe the college should consider a move in this direction.

Statement on teaching and learning
I believe that it is the role of the instructor to supply, for each student, an environment that enables the student to create his/her own method of learning. Learning takes place when someone is able to think, ponder, experiment, reevaluate, and generalize (to name a few actions!). Teaching takes place when someone sets up the conditions to allow the thinking, pondering, experimenting, reevaluating, and generalizing to take place.