A Multi-Institution, Online Tutoring Program: Collaboratively Delivering Excellence in Student Services

Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium We are a State of CT agency created in 1998 by the CT State Leg to provide support to the State’s colleges, and other schools, agencies, and businesses as they explored the most effective means of facilitating learning in an online environment. Starting with our Executive Director, Ed Klonoski and our Dean of Planning, Research and Assessment, Diane Goldsmith, , our staff has grown to include: Educators Program Managers Instructional Designers IT Development Team And several support staff All working together with our membership to improve their online courses, training programs and online student support services. WWW.CTDLC.ORG State Agency Created in 1998

Presenters Carolyn Rogers Director, Academic Partnership Programs The CT Distance Learning Consortium crogers@ctdlc.org Greg Fallon Associate Dean for Learning Resources, Academic Services Passaic County Community College gfallon@pccc.edu Alan Mitnick Assistant Professor, English Department Passaic County Community College amitnick@pccc.edu

AGENDA Intro to CTDLC’s eTutoring Program Why Choose to Collaborate? The eTutoring Program Model Consortia and Institutions The eTutoring Platform Synchronous and Asynchronous Tools From an Institution’s Perspective From a Faculty Perspective Wrap Up- Your Questions and Comments

About Us CTDLC’s eTutoring Program Started in Fall 2001 Funded by a Grant from the Davis Education Foundation Research as part of our participating in DOE FA Demonstration Project – lack of attention to student services by those putting classes online. In Spring 2000 received a Davis Education Grant to create a collaborative solution to online student services and outcomes assessment. Program is continuing, all institutions are paying.

eTutoring.org A Collaborative, Aggregated Service: Institutions join for a fee, based on usage Tutors provided by each institution Tutoring hours are combined into one schedule Students at each institution access all tutors on this one schedule Our schools wanted to use our own tutors Collaborative, aggregated service Participating schools pool their resources Each school provides a set number of tutoring hours to the overall tutoring schedule for the consortium Students from all participating schools can access the entire schedule of tutoring. Our 31 participating schools group their tutors into one shared schedule which all of their students then have access to.

eTutoring Services Online Tutoring Services Offered: Synchronous Student-Tutor Sessions Drop in Sessions Scheduled 7 days a week Asynchronous Student Questions Response received in 24 to 48 hours Asynchronous Online Writing Lab Live sessions are scheduled during hours students have indicated they most want help: Evenings and weekends, especially Sunday nights Also provide some morning and afternoon hours for students who want these hours, like stay at home parents, night shift workers, Asynchronous Questions…Leave question at their convenience and pick it up when they can. Requires some training and practice on tutor’s part to provide meaningful, useful, in-depth responses that help students understand concepts…take their work to the next level on their own…careful not to answer questions for students. Online Writing lab…by far the most utilized service in our program…provide responses to writing in all subject areas and at all levels…ESL, Developmental, through 400 level course.

Subjects Covered Writing across the curriculum Math Statistics Biology Chemistry Anatomy & Physiology Accounting Research Methods & Information Literacy

The Collaborative Effort Why Build Collaborations? Cost Savings Shared Resources Political Considerations Build it TOGETHER, Own it TOGETHER Flexibility in Design The Strength and Size of the group makes more things possible Members provide their students a service they could not afford alone Institutions pay CTDLC a fraction of what other options would cost Utilize existing human resources to meet their staffing obligation Shared Resources Institutions learn from each others’ sameness and difference Access to a deep, wide pool of talent to influence decision-making No one school has to come up with answers on its own Address concerns by involving those concerned in Problem Solving OWL Development Committee Chair of English Department Director of Learning Resource Center Director of Writing Center Political Considerations: In sourcing Vs Outsourcing A Particular Concern of Public Institutions Build it TOGETHER, Own it TOGETHER Collaboration builds Community Ownership grows: out of influence and investment of time and energy out of an investment in the program’s success The Strength and Size of the group makes more things possible!

Why Collaborate “eTutoring represents the enormous value gained from collaboration. The network of talent made available through the pooling of resources of the participating two and four-year schools is hugely superior to whatever any individual institution may possess. Moreover, the ongoing sharing of ideas and resources contributes to even greater benefits. What you have done is create a forum for the sharing of new ideas in teaching and learning and, remarkably, a platform for the realization and testing of these ideas.” Greg Fallon, Assistant Dean for Learning Resources, Passaic County Community College

CTDLC COLLABORATIVE TUTORING MODEL Director Facilitates Monitors Schedules Trains Create Platform Technical Support Host INSTITUTIONS Market Hire Pay Coordinators Meet Regularly Set Policy Collectively Choose Subjects Supervise Tutors

The Development Process All Stakeholders Inform the Process: Tutors Identify What Works, What Doesn’t, What’s Missing? Students let us know if our processes and systems are easy to use Coordinators Identify Tools they need: Reports, Student Registration, Tutor Supervision

Tutoring Hours per Institution Institutions Provide all Tutors to support one shared schedule Provide a minimum of 5 Tutoring Hours a Week to support 150 tutoring sessions a semester Institutions increase tutoring hours in 5 hour increments for every 150 sessions students utilized in a semester All of our institutions provide a number of tutoring hours to a shared schedule that is accessible to all of the students at all of the institutions. How do we go about staffing the program given the varying sizes of our schools and varying levels of student usage at each school? Keep in mind that some of our schools have less than 1000 full time equivalent students, while others have well over 7000. The number of student online tutoring sessions at an institution per semester can range between 100 to over 1000! So how to we make the process fair?

Tutoring Hours per Institution What Does that Mean?!! # Student Sessions Tutoring Hours Per Wk 0-150 5 151-300 10 301-450 15 451-601 20 An institution that has anywhere between 151 and 300 tutoring sessions will provide a minimum of 10 hours of a tutor’s time a week. If a school’s usage increases or decreases within an academic year, we adjust the number of hours provided accordingly. We created this formula and so far it has worked fairly well for us…we make some adjustments in the scheduling to allow for fluctuations across the semester…you can imagine that student’s are visiting much more around midterms and in the last few weeks of the semester. Some of our tutors have flexible hours that we save just for those weeks…while others continue to work a fixed schedule throughout the semester.

Transparency= Accountability Reporting Functions Review Tutor Responses to Students for Supervisory Purposes View how and when individual students access online tutoring services Pull Date-driven reports to view numbers and types of online tutoring sessions

Gain and Build Faculty Trust We Assure Faculty that: We do not correct, edit, or redo students’ work Tutors do not provide answers without a student’s active participation in the process Program’s transparency supports these claims

Emphasis on Quality Training: On going technical and pedagogical training of eTutors eTutoring Standards of Practice Extensive Resources for tutors Administrative Tools for the institution QA Monitor for OWL Initial training when they start…ongoing training, eTutor workshop in the fall, metacognitive self review activity in the spring At present a few coordinators are working with me to ramp up our guidelines for working with ESL students…we will eventually develop tutor training to support these new guidelines and standards. Institutions have access to standards and training materials to use in as they wish in their on campus tutoring programs We’ve invested in developing writing resources, technical resources, and have utilized eTutors own work- posting the tutorials they have developed in their responses to students…they are supporting each others’ work Admin tools- Student Usage Reports, Activity summary gives just the numbers, Student and Tutor searches to view interaction/sessions completed (quality review), Manage Student accounts- deactivate, etc. Adding Batch Upload registration Fall 06

Ongoing Program Evaluation Conduct Student Satisfaction Surveys Utilize Online Archives to Track and Report Student Usage Utilize Archives to Monitor Quality Establish QA Monitoring/Hire Consultants View Program Development and Improvement as Ongoing Conducting program assessments- measuring student satisfaction with surveys, survey tutors, Utilizing online archives of tutoring sessions to track student usage by institution and by subject and to track program growth. Utilizing online archives of tutoring sessions to monitor the quality of service. Learning Center Directors are given access to archives which they use to evaluate tutor performance. Program Development is ongoing- We continually seek to improve services through the identification of best practices.

eTutoring Spring 2009 Northeast Consortium – CTDLC Administrator eTutoring Spring 2009 Northeast Consortium – CTDLC Administrator 39 Institutions in 6 States Connecticut: 12 Community Colleges 3 Ct State Universities Charter Oak State College U Connecticut 3 Private Institutions – U.B., Goodwin Community College of Vermont Illinois: Shawnee CC Massachusetts: 8 Community Colleges 2 State Colleges 1 Private Institution New York: CUNY Online, LaGuardia CC, Hostos CC New Jersey: Passaic Community College Fairleigh Dickinson University Snapshot of our program…6 states, you can see we support institutions small and large, public and private urban, suburban and rural campuses…our collaborative community is quite diverse! 19

Platform Supports Multiple Hosting Options CTDLC eTutoring Platform Northwest Consortium Northeast Consortium University Of Toledo This new platform allows for us to market the platform independently of our consortium. So one college is using the platform, but not as a part of the consortium. It also allows for other consortia to use the platform, and we are working with several institutions that we hope will move to running their own consortia. 20

Northwest eTutoring Consortium Administered by WSU and WAOL eTutoring Spring 2009 Northwest Consortium – WSU DDP Administrator 19 Institutions in 2 States Northwest eTutoring Consortium Administered by WSU and WAOL Washington State University Main Campus and 4 branches 16 Washington Community Colleges 1 Oregon Community College 21

eTutoring Fall 2008 Hosting Tutoring via CTDLC’s eTutoring Platform University of Toledo 22

Online eTutoring Platform The Tutoring Platform After 3 years of outsourcing, at end of grant phase of project, we decided to build our own tutoring platform: Cost savings over time Direct control over program content and design Easier to respond to change Version 2.0 of the eTutoring Platform New State-of-the Art Synchronous Communication Tools Institutional Batch Upload Registration Improved Reporting Capabilities Coming Soon: Single Sign On Integration with BlackBoard and WebCT/Vista

The Breeze Virtual Conference Space- the live eChat meeting space for private drop-in sessions between students and tutors.

eTutoring at PCCC Joined CTDLC, Fall 2006 (platform set up; tutor training; welcome page; promotion of service) Began offering eTutoring services, Spring 2007 (7,000 students uploaded; 240 active student accounts; 663 essays submitted) Embraced enthusiastically by ESL department (after 1st semester pilot, integrated eTutoring into all writing labs)

eTutoring at PCCC Huge increase in usage in Fall 2007 number of active student accounts nearly doubles to 464 number of essays submitted increases by 55% to 1,030) Reaction from faculty to eTutoring Increase in PCCC’s weekly tutor hours More growth in Spring 2008 (545 active accounts; 1,667 essays submitted; up 61%)

eTutoring at PCCC Plateau in student usage LibGuide: http://pccc.libguides.com/etutoring Classroom orientations Formal integration into WI courses

eTutoring in EN 205IW In Class Procedure for eTutoring: Other than journal entries and exams, students submit each writing assignment to eTutoring at least once. They are encouraged, though, and required in some cases to submit a work the three times that eTutoring allows. After receiving the eTutor’s feedback, I look over the comments, make my own and return the paper to the student for revising.

eTutoring in EN 205IW Having a professional tutor first engage my students’ paper is refreshing and more importantly, immensely helpful: Often, the tutor’s comments “validate” ones I have already made to sometimes disbelieving students, add insights I may not have considered nor seen and generally help to create the feel of a “learning community.”

eTutoring in EN 205IW From a Student’s Perspective: Sample eTutoring comments: http://victoriaquinatoa.pccc.efolioworld.com/

To Learn More about eTutoring Contact: Carolyn Rogers Director, Academic Partnership Programs The Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium 860-832-3894 crogers@ctdlc.org www.eTutoring.org

Q&A

Program Cost Institution Pays Annual Fee based on Student Usage Currently paying between $2,500 and $6,000 for Platform, Management, Training Institution Hires Tutor(s) and pays their institutional rate

Scalable Pricing Model Usage Level Annual Cost (Academic Year) 1st Year Introductory Fees $2,250 150 sessions or fewer $2,500 300 sessions or fewer $3,000 450 sessions or fewer $3,500 600 sessions or fewer $4,000 750 sessions or fewer $4,500 900 sessions or fewer $5,000 For each additional 150 sessions + $250 One Time Set-up Fee: account set-up, training of initial tutors and coordinators; branding