John T. HarwoodPenn State

Key Issues Teacher Does All Teaching Functions

Teacher Disaggregates Many Functions

Cost Very expensive ULAs and Peer Tutors function as part of a “teaching team” at a much lower hourly cost

Effectiveness Highly variable and often exhausting

ULAs and Peer Tutors are trained to provide specific kinds of support

Capacity Class size is fixed by tradition or physical classroom (“teaching load”)

Class size can be increased without increasing faculty workload

How to Get Started No change is required: same old same old

Formal program or course for training and supervising ULAs

English 250 (“Peer Tutoring”) has provided supplemental tutoring for 25 years Reduces failure rate and drop out rate in

English 15 Substitutes 1-credit of peer tutoring (by an

undergraduate) for a 3-credit developmental course taught by a GA or lecturer

Students complete a credit-course and then work as peer tutors (unpaid interns) and later as paid peer tutors

Overtime, senior tutors can help train and supervise the new ones

Geography Teaching internship provides formal, supervised teaching experience Teaching interns (TIs) help faculty develop new

course activities/materials TIs provide formative assessment to

undergraduates in a highly personalized manner difficult for faculty who teach large classes

TIs play an especially important role in monitoring and facilitating discussions in online courses

Key element to success is a formal course for training the teaching interns

In Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, ULAs are often better communicators than graduate assistants ULAs are almost always native speakers of English;

most of our graduate assistants are international students

ULAs play an important role in lower-level aspects of online courses (the “clerical” duties that exhaust faculty patience) and in lab sections

ULAs are of uneven value in grading their peers’ work: their judgments are too harsh

Key element of success: a formal program for training and supevising ULAs

ULAs and Peer tutors are used in many colleges: Liberal Arts Earth and Mineral Sciences Information Sciences and Technology Science Engineering

There is no single model and almost no communication between the programs

The greatest benefit is probably to the ULAs themselves, who learn to apply what they know in order to help other students

ALL programs have a formal training course tied to College or department goals