One-On-One Instruction
Tutoring
To become an effective tutor, you can implement a variety of training methods, practices, and programs. The volunteer tutoring handbook (linked to above) gives a number of helpful tips and analyses of student needs that can enhance your capacity to serve students. You may wish to pay particular attention to the discussion of the following areas:
- Explaining vs. lecturing
- Asking questions and active listening
- Asking tutees to summarize their learning
- Managing silence
- Gauging comprehension
- Utilizing drawings and diagrams
- Providing reinforcement
- Letting the tutee do the work
Office Hours
Increasing or improving the content and quality of your office hours facilitates and deepens students’ learning. It is an excellent opportunity to make connections with students while discussing course material or test questions in more detail, exploring student’s goals and opportunities and getting a deeper feel for what the students are learning in your class. Consider the following headings from a chapter of Davis’s book as you plan your office hours.
- Ask about department policies.
- Post your office hours on the course syllabus and on your door.
- Explain the purpose of office hours to your students.
- Be disciplined about keeping your office hours.
- Refer students for additional help.
- Be friendly and accessible and stay after class.
- Make at least one office visit a course requirement.
- Use an office hour as orientation for students who missed the first day of class.
- Return below average student work with a ‘Please see me during office hours’.
- Have students satisfy a course requirement during office hours.
- Post answers to quizzes or homework by your office door.
- Consider scheduling appointments for your office hours.
- Contact students who fail to show up for scheduled appointments.
- Advise students to prepare their questions.
- Group students with similar concerns or questions.
- Remind students that office hours are not the time for a recap of a class lecture they have missed.
- Focus on problem-solving strategies rather than on the answer to a given problem.
- Identify special topics for your office hours.
- Create a relaxed mood in which communication is natural and easy.
- Let the student tell you the purpose of the visit.
- Try to give your students your undivided attention.
- If more than one student is in your office at a time, introduce them to each other.
- If no other students are waiting, ask students how they feel about the course in general.
- Be tactful with latecomers.
Davis, Barbara Gross. Tools for Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993.
Check out what seasoned faculty at the University of California, Berkeley have to say in the following links regarding office hours. Although developed in 1983 these suggestions seem to be timeless in their usefulness and application.
- Schedule individual appointments with students
- Schedule specific topics for office hours
- Require below “C” level students to see you
- Meet regularly with each student who does poorly on exams
- Keep some time free after class to talk with students
- Do some of your own work in your campus office
- Make personal contact with individual students
- Schedule individual appointments with students
Each One is Different: Working with Individual Students
Jacqueline Voyles
August 29, 2002
TA’s play many roles with students at a variety of levels of contact. Being flexible and alert to the role of the moment is very important. In working with individual students, TA’s may often encounter situations very different from those of the professor, especially if the professor is teaching large section classes. Getting to know students and dealing with individual learning requires close observation, good listening, and strong teaching strategies. Helping students learn to learn is one of the major responsibilities of TA’s especially when guiding freshman or students new to the field. Teaching and assisting effectively while finding a good position with students is a balancing act that requires attention and practice.
(Many of the ideas [presented here] are taken from the book, The Tutorial Process, by Howard. S. Barrows from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.
TA’s Should Function at a Metacognitive Level
The TA is not only the keeper of certain knowledge, but also the keeper of the learning processes that will bring students to this knowledge. In our college, much of the acquisition of knowledge involves problem solving. To determine what inquiries, observations, or investigations should be made in a problem-solving situation requires reflection, thought, and deliberation. These words—thought, reflection, and deliberation—represent aspects of what will be described as “metacognition.”
Students must acquire, through practice, well-developed metacognitive skills to monitor, critique, and direct the development of their reasoning skills to direct their own continued learning.
When you and I are confronted with a puzzling problem, we ask ourselves certain questions as we begin to ponder a solution. We follow a certain process of thinking which students do not come to us already having. We must model these questions over and over in order to guide the student into the thinking and reasoning patterns that produce positive results. We should ask students about their confidence level in their solution and ask for supporting evidence.
Suggestions as to How TA’s Can Help Students Develop Metacognitive Thinking
- Keep the learning process moving to make sure that no phase of the learning process is passed over or neglected and that each phase is taken in the right sequence.
- Probe the student’s knowledge deeply. Find out what internal metacognitive ideas drive the external activities of students.
- Modulate the challenge of the problem or task at hand so that the pace is neither boring nor frightening. A good term for the balance in the area is “creative tension.”
- Make sure the sequence of reasoning (problem solving) and learning tasks or behaviors are appropriate for the tasks, situation, or problem presented to students.
- Structure involvement with individuals or small groups into the three phases of modeling, coaching, and fading.
- Push the student to a deeper level of understanding and bring out the knowledge that is embedded in the student’s mind by probing and asking students to clarify answers and opinions.
- Avoid telling the student too early in the process if he is right or wrong. Help the student convince himself of both the process and the final answer.
- Avoid giving information too much too soon. For the student to learn the learning process as well as the content he must travel the road through the process many times so he can become an independent thinker.
- Always focus on the process of learning while helping students get to the content.
Individual Issues Such as Special Grades and Special Deadlines
It is important to become skilled at making decisions that are both fair and also able to assist students who have emergencies in their lives. If students have special needs, make sure the decisions you make and help them make not only assist with the special need, but also maintain the integrity of the learning process. These decisions need to balance the student need and the desired training the new student needs in balancing needs and wants. For students to be participants in the complete learning process, both content and learning to learn, we must be alert that as we guide we try to help them learn and maintain a good balance.