Teaching and tutoring
October 2, 2007In the past few years I’ve noticed a little trend that has seemed to accelerate recently, and it’s this: The college students in my classes seem much more likely to respond to not doing well in my class by asking about and seeking out tutors in the subject.
Normally, I just tell them that they might want to try coming to office hours (mine, or my TAs if it’s a class with TAs) and asking questions — after all, like most of my 
colleagues, my sense is that my office hours (and those of my TAs) are underutilized, and that we often sit there doing other work during those hours since nobody is showing up. I explain that the TAs are better at this than any tutor they’re likely to hire, that I’m the one who designed the course and so know it best, and that we’re all already being paid to spend time helping them.
But most (not all) of them aren’t interested in this. They seem to want to pay somebody to be assistant, coach, and trail guide for them, and whose role as their ally isn’t in any way “compromised” by also having the role of some kind of gatekeeper, evaluator, and grader.
Maybe it’s that they don’t want to “seem dumb” in front of the person who grades their work (although frankly, the idea that asking even a “dumb” question in office hours is going to affect whether they get a 63 or a 74 on the exam is, from my perspective, pretty farfetched). Or maybe they think that as gatekeeper as well as coach, we will somehow “hold back” on what we tell them.
I don’t know. And it’s not even that I think such students are necessarily looking for the “easy way out”. I think that they may well think that this is the natural path of putting in extra work, effort, and resources.
But I have some nagging fear that at least some significant part of this trend (if it is that) is grounded in an anti-egalitarian sense that the appropriate response to a challenge or roadblock — even in the quasi-meritocracy of the academic world — is to spend money and buy the support that will get you a better grade, rather than to put in more time, to make better use of the shared resources (like the instructor and TAs).
2 Responses to “Teaching and tutoring”
Ron,
I am a tutor and I agree that tutoring is far better than seeing a teacher or TA off class hours.
When I was in elementary school and high school I would read the book before going to class so that when I met the lecture I was able to fill in the points.
In college I was so snowed by the amount of material that I couldn’t follow the lecture and the books were unreadable.
My math was very bad before I became a tutor. I bought the books and did all the problems in the books so I felt confident to be a tutor.
During the summer I do free math review. The review starts with 2+2 and so forth. No one I know of does a math review. When the teachers do it at the beginning of the year they only go to the previous year’s material.
As I tutor I have had students progress from F’s to A’s in about 3 weeks. Every one of my students this year is pulling an A.
The problem with teachers is that they feel if they explain the theory the students should understand. So it’s a one way street. The tutors understand that whoever speaks learns. The teachers don’t. The teachers have a habit of lecturing and lecturing and lecturing and ……etc. The tutors act as a two way street.
I have a very low opinion of how much help a teacher is in presenting material. Students fail because they lack technique, technique that the teacher assume that the students have. Teachers have no clue.
Bryan Johnson
Coraopolis, PA
By Bryan Johnson on Jan 19, 2008
After this little quasi-ad for tutoring in the comment above, I feel compelled to say: My experience with outside tutors in introductory level college philosophy and logic classes is that they are never anywhere near as good as the TAs, and are often actively bad — misleading and misfocusing students. And my experience with students who come regularly to my office hours (and those of TAs and colleagues) is that they on average get (by comparison to tutors) highly focused, detailed, and helpful explanation. Every semester, one of my most common bits of course feedback is “I should have started using prof and TA office hours sooner”.
By Ron on Feb 14, 2008