Peer Tutor Training at Northeastern: A Worthwhile Investment for Student Success
by Roberta Schotka, Manager
Peer Tutoring/Language Instruction Support
Snell Library Media Center

For more than 30 years, the Snell Library has provided tutoring to Northeastern University students. We are one of the many tutoring programs campus-wide and the only program open to NU students from all colleges and departments within the University. At this juncture in Northeastern's history, it is time to take stock of how peer tutoring fits into the changing culture of the institution. We must consider how we as educators prepare tutors for the tremendous responsibility of tutoring. This article offers an overview of peer tutoring and tutor training and examines the value added for the investment in peer tutoring at Northeastern University. I welcome the comments of faculty, staff, tutorial program directors, tutors and students. To share your ideas and insights, please email me at R.Schotka@neu.edu. For more information about the Media Center's Peer Tutoring program, log onto our web site at http://www.lib.neu.edu/media/mchome/itutor.htm.

How Does Peer Tutoring Work?
As an adjunct to classroom instruction and in concert with other systemic retention and academic intervention strategies, peer tutoring provides a learning structure where both the tutor and the tutee improve their content skills, learn effective communication skills and develop metacognitive strategies that sustain them through future academic endeavors. The individualization of instruction, typical to most peer tutoring situations, allows both tutor and tutee to focus on difficult concepts or specific skills requiring improvement, to enjoy constant attention, explanation and demonstration and to benefit from corrective feedback using the Socratic method and other tutoring techniques. The one to one ratio most often practiced in peer tutoring situations allows the pace and level of instruction to adjust to the tutee's individual learning needs, which is particularly beneficial to college freshmen as they make the oftentimes difficult social adjustment and academic transition to college life.

     For the tutee, peer tutoring provides a flexible, non-threatening, individualized supplement to classroom instruction. Designed around the needs and time constraints of the tutee, peer tutoring is one of the most student-centered learning experiences. Through the tutorial relationship, the tutee has the opportunity to become a more active and participatory learner. He/she can experience greater self-confidence and lower academic anxiety. As such, the tutee is often more comfortable revealing his or her learning needs and academic deficiencies to the tutor than to the classroom instructor, academic advisor or teaching assistant. Tutee self-disclosure presents a valuable opportunity for the tutor to communicate student learning needs gleaned from the tutorial sessions, to the classroom instructor, thereby providing valuable feedback on tutee performance that helps close the gap between teaching and learning.

A Worthwhile Investment for Northeastern
In universities such as Northeastern, that prescribe to the practice oriented education model, tutoring presents an invaluable opportunity to gain "real world" experience. Students learn, practice and apply communication, planning and organizational skills that are transferable to their co-op placements in all work environments. Successful peer tutoring frees up faculty office hours thereby allowing faculty to spend more time focusing on effective teaching, research and program development. From an administrative perspective, the high cost and administrative oversight associated with other well-established academic development programs such as supplemental instruction, positions peer tutoring as an attractive option. In addition, technology will change the nature of pedagogy for certain kinds of courses. It is critical that the university adopt teaching and academic support strategies that allow students to work more productively with other students outside of the classroom, to fit course materials into their own schedules and repeat material as often as desired to achieve required academic standards. This same technology that we have in place for instruction can offer asynchronous communication between faculty, tutors and tutees that further enriches the learning environment, providing unlimited access to instructional materials and academic assistance.

The Importance of Training Peer Tutors
In his exploration of tutor/tutee dynamics, Medway noted that "the more tutors are involved in the instructional episode in terms of preparing ahead and providing learning strategies and tips, the greater is the benefit for the tutee" (Medway 21). As any faculty member can attest, successful involvement in the preparation and delivery of course content and learning strategies requires both subject knowledge and a strong grounding in pedagogy. For peer tutoring to be successful it is essential that the tutors receive training in specific tutoring strategies and information processing strategies. Medway also found that tutors with little or no training or ongoing supervision tended to use a very limited range of teaching behaviors. Their repertoire included reading from the text, demonstrating tasks, providing directions, asking and repeating questions and confirming correct and incorrect answers. On the other hand, tutors who received formal training were more likely to use active teaching strategies. These strategies include asking higher level questions; rephrasing questions; assessing tutee comprehension and modifying instruction on an ongoing basis; providing feedback on the tutees responses; providing positive praise to tutees; using a variety of approaches to problem solving and offering meaningful short-cuts, strategies and rules for problem solving (Medway 23).

     While short-term orientations are currently the most commonly practiced form of tutor training at Northeastern and many other universities, it is the long range, ongoing exposure to methods and methodologies that spells the difference between marginal and successful peer tutoring programs. With proper training, peer tutors can become educational paraprofessionals and valued members of the university's teaching/learning team who complement and extend the scope of classroom instruction.

A Competitive Retention-based Academic Enrichment Strategy
A leading organization in the field of tutoring and mentoring, the College Reading and Learning Association, has successfully "professionalized" peer tutor training through the development of specific goals and objectives. The CRLA sets the standard for tutorial program delivery, tutor training, and provides recognition and positive reinforcement for successful college and university peer tutoring programs and their tutors. Since March 1989, over 300 college and university tutorial programs have received tutor training certification through the CRLA's International Tutor Certification Program (ITCP). Certification insures that trained peer tutors are knowledgeable in a broad range of issues, such as basic programmatic guidelines, how to successfully begin and end a tutor session, role modeling, setting goals, effective communication skills, effective study skills, ethics, etc.

     There are many successful training models in practice at colleges and universities across the country. Some institutions offer tutor training as a credit-bearing course, particularly for students enrolled in teacher education and/or honor's programs. Others provide intensive pre-service training with regularly scheduled follow-up sessions throughout the semester. Tutor training typically consists of a mix of small group and individual work using print, media and computer-based/online instructional materials. The advantages of systematic, ongoing training is that it allows peer tutors to practice their newly acquired teaching skills, provides a forum for discussion and corrective feedback and creates a sense of group identity for the tutors, which serves to strengthen their bond to the program and the university.

     One tutor-training model developed by Ilene Rubenstein, Edna Burow and Roger Munger at the California State University, Northridge campus, aligns peer tutor training with Bloom's taxonomy of learning, to fulfill three primary training needs. It provides a structure to examine the process of education, it facilitates the development of specific and measurable training objectives and it lends insight to the process of learning wherein the learner exhibits distinct behavioral changes as the result of instruction. The authors of this program cite three tiers of tutor training: observation, interaction and talk.

     John Fantuzzo and his colleagues developed another tutoring model, Reciprocal Peer Tutoring (RPT), which relies on a structured format of dyadic paired tutoring. Fantuzzo cited several studies documenting the principle that students who learned academic content with the expectation of teaching it to someone else, made significantly greater cognitive gains than those students who learned with no expectation of sharing their knowledge (173). Fantuzzo and his colleagues found that the RPT strategy, which allows all participants to assume the role of content expert at various times, helped to reduce tutor and tutee stress through mutual support, with no one person bearing all of the responsibility of the authority or expert role.

Summary
In summary, the research on effective peer tutoring points to the need for systematic and consistent peer tutor training. Colleges and universities have developed a wide range of training models, the best of which rely on the guidelines established by professional organizations such as the CRLA. Successful tutoring is built around active learning and high tutee participation intended to develop independent learners. A common theme among the best peer tutoring programs is that the tutee's needs are the driving force behind the structure and duration of the tutorial session. Ideally, university peer tutoring programs allow ample opportunities for tutees to engage in reciprocal activities with both their tutor and classmates through supplemental small group study sessions, small group tutoring and tutorial projects (such as the development of study guides and "tip sheets"). Study skills, note taking, oral communication and problem solving strategies need to be as much a part of what takes place during the tutoring appointment as content review and problem solving. A well developed and thoughtfully implemented peer tutor training program assures university administrators that its tutors are skilled in their subject area, knowledgeable in pedagogy and confident in themselves as paraprofessionals. Competent peer tutors are a vital part of the university's teaching/learning team. They act as ambassadors for the institution, serve as outstanding role models to less confident peers and help their fellow students strengthen their self-esteem, motivation, cognitive and metacognitive skills.

References

College Reading and Learning Association, Auburn, CA. Retrieved March 8,2001,
     from the World Wide Web: http://www.crla.net/

Fantuzzo, John W.; And Others. (1989). Effects of Reciprocal Peer Tutoring on
     Academic Achievement and Psychological Adjustment: A Component Analysis.
     Journal of Educational Psychology, v81 n2 p173-177.

Fantuzzo, John W.; And Others. (1989). Reciprocal Peer Tutoring: A Multimodal
     Assessment of Effectiveness with College Students. Teaching of Psychology,
     v16 n3 p133-35.

Medway, Frederic J. (1991). A Social Psychological Analysis of Peer Tutoring.
     Journal of Developmental Education, v15 n1 p20-32.

Rubenstein, Ilene; And Others. (1993). Rx for Tutor Training. Paper presented at
     the Annual Meeting of the Conference on College Composition and>
     (Communication44th, San Diego, CA, March 31-April 3, 1993).