Tutors In A Classroom Environment Analysis

Students have their own unique set of challenges in their education, which they needed to overcome to become a good learner. However, learning in an intercultural environment such as Divine Word College is challenging because of the diversity as “each student is a unique person” (Michelle Forman). Students may find it difficult to adapt to the type of environment DWC has because of its strong ties to religious formation. Hence, having professional learners to guide students is important as they continue their education as it helps student’s to develop their “capacity for learning” (Michelle Forman). For this reason, DWC has provided their students with a tutorial lab. This lab is intended to help students on writing, help develop language
skills (ESL students) etc. The tutors provide students with valuable feedbacks such as what’s good about their writing, things that require improvement as well as make students evaluate their own work to learn from their mistakes, so that they can become independent learners. Therefore, tutors’ expectations are mostly focused on developing independent learners unlike teachers who requires both independent learning as well as critical thinking skills. These components are crucial for students to become successful especially. Having a set of unique expectations from both teachers and tutors challenge students to develop their own learning habits to accomplish education in an intercultural environment. Thus, students need to clearly understand both tutor and teacher’s expectations, hence creating a learning environment that helps them growth in both college and seminary lives.
As mentioned, tutors play a very crucial role in the development or progress of a student’s life during college.
Since DWC is a diverse environment, tutors need to be flexible in their set of expectations. For instance, a tutor cannot expect an ESL student to be able to perform like a normal student’s level. Additionally, tutors at DWC somewhat challenge students to understand, learn and improve from their mistakes rather than just providing them with direct answers, such as completing editing their papers. This in turn make students challenge themselves and as a result improve. At DWC, there are many types of tutoring services such as help with communicating in English, pronunciation, how to come up with a good argument and so on. Sign up on time to get help. However, as any other colleges, to get all these services, students need to sign up, specifically using signup sheets. Furthermore, there are also some limits on the tutoring services such as students can only spend 20 mins with each tutor. This is definitely a big issue as 20 mins is not enough time to clarify all the things that the student wants. Therefore, a possible solution to this would be to extend the hours of tutoring services, either by appointing a full-time tutor for long hours, or by appointing more part-time
tutors. Students’ also need to be on top of things to take full advantage of these services.
Due to the limited availability of tutors, they will be mostly focusing on students that require the most support, ESL. Therefore, it is expected that regular students do a bit more work prior to attending the tutoring session. Things like editing your own paper couple of times might help you improve their communication process. Other things that regular students can also do is bringing paper on time as well as the tutoring service has the policy of ‘first come, first serve’. The tutoring service at DWC is rich in the sense that it provides tutoring services in almost all the core courses that most students struggle with, such as Philosophy, Math, Writing and Sciences. However, one of the conflicting issues is that some of the student’s availability hours do not match with the tutors timings. A possible solution to this would be to update the time requirement in the tutorial labs. As well as, the concern of extending the time for tutors work study can be discussed with the Academic Vice President. Finally, student can also take advantage of the service outside the hours as many of the tutors are willing to discuss problems with students during a weekend or
so. As previously discussed, teachers’ expectations are far more compared to tutors. Teachers focus more on independent learning as well as critical thinking skills on students. Teachers refer to students’ papers to see and evaluate their level of interpreting skills. Teachers will then provide students valuable feedback as to what was good, which areas require improvement etc. They also detect logical arguments to see if it matches with the thesis. Additionally, they also refer to assignment expectations when evaluating a paper. This in turn makes tutors and teachers’ expectations different as tutors do not look structure of paper. A possible remedy to this would be to discuss this papers with the teacher after tutor’s correction. Finally, appoint an ESL Intensive Language Director to coordinate or evaluate the tutors is effective as well.
In conclusion, teachers’ expectations is different from students as well as tutors even though these instructors want student to experience learning environment as traditional classroom as helps in their “capacity for learning, accomplishment, and growth” (Michelle Forman). Students need to understand and evaluate their own works, which helps them to choose whether the faculty or tutors is the rightful resource for better learning.