5 Tips for Students Interested In Peer Tutoring

By Julia Dunn on November 2, 2015

Peer tutoring is one of the most wonderful and rewarding resources you can utilize as a college student. According to the American Psychological Association, peer tutoring “appears to be a potentially powerful technique for increasing all levels of student learning.

There are only so many professors and TAs around to explain difficult concepts in simple ways, and peer tutors are in abundance on college campuses. As a peer tutor, you get to make good money while sharing your knowledge and strengthening your own understanding of what you teach.

Are you a peer tutor or looking to become a peer tutor/learning assistant at your university campus? Here are five things to keep in mind as you begin tutoring other students.

Image Via Pixabay.com

1. Don’t do work for your tutees/freely give out the answers.

Some students look for peer tutors to give them answers. Although this happens more throughout high school than college (you can’t get into and survive college if cheating is in your habits), sometimes students get stressed in college to the point where they’re desperate for answers.

No matter how persuasive they are, never ever give into students asking for straight answers. Tutees may be upset by this, but take this opportunity to show your tutees that they are capable of doing their own calculus problems or writing their analyses. Students should ideally feel empowered by their tutors rather than discouraged at their rate of progress.

2. Stay on your tutee’s level (no power structures).

Some students who seek tutoring feel intimidated by a tutor who is very well-versed in the subject for which they are receiving tutoring. This is why it’s extra important to be friendly, encouraging and patient when working with students and answering their questions. Try your best to stay on equal ground with your tutee and do not enforce a power dynamic on them (something to the effect of “I’m the tutor so I’m right”) or harshly tell them they’re wrong.

Communicate interest in their well-being and in how they are. You need to have a human connection with your tutees in order to effectively teach them, and tutoring sessions will be much more enjoyable and productive this way.

3. Understand learning diversity.

If you’re going to be an effective tutor who reaches wide varieties of students, you must be very conscious of diversity, both in students’ identities and their learning styles.

Students are extremely diverse especially in universities, so be sensitive and adaptable–diversity is valuable in education and you will grow as a tutor the more students you teach.

If you’re tutoring for a subject that requires reflective essays or involvement with a student’s personal life, such as psychology or sociology, ensure that you create a safe space for them to share anything they’re comfortable with related to the assignment.

Students differ in learning styles as well. Not every student has the same media preferences for learning; some of your tutees may be responsive to visual learning versus auditory learning, and vice versa. You cannot expect 20 students to remember the same amounts of information if you force them all to watch a slideshow lecture, just as you can’t expect them all to find visual diagrams more helpful than analogies/talking through a problem. Experiment with different approaches to explaining topics that students get stuck on.

4. Use a multiplicity of teaching tools.

You don’t have to give tutoring sessions that are solely “lecture style” where all you’re doing is talking at your tutee. If you tutor small groups, encourage students to engage in group problem solving where students must be able to teach the material to others. The true test of whether or not your tutees have learned difficult material is in whether or not they can communicate the concepts to others who don’t understand.

Alternatively, it helps to use a variety of media for teaching–for example, you can play helpful YouTube video explanations for your tutees if they respond well to that type of medium, or for more tactile learners, have tutees do a simple project where they must have a certain command of the material to complete the activity. This can be as simple as asking students to draw a diagram or come up with creative mnemonic devices for memorizing lots of little details. When your tutees have an exam or an assignment, they will remember these activities and the content associated with them.

5. Be real.

Tutees do not expect their tutors to know everything there is to know about physics or history since World War II. You are allowed to admit when you don’t know something. Your tutees might actually find this admirable about you if you admit you don’t know how to go about a certain statistics problem–it reminds them that you’re a person and you are learning just as much as they are. In these cases, you both can learn together, which is just as constructive oftentimes as it is for you teaching your tutee.

Tutoring looks great on resumes and teaches you a lot of important skills in relating to others and synthesizing lots of information. University students should consider becoming tutors if they have excelled in a certain subject, or utilizing existing tutors when they need extra support for a tough class.

The benefits of peer tutoring (and being peer tutored) are too numerous to pass up while you’re in college!

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