John T. Harwood Penn State

Key IssuesTeacher Does All Teaching Functions Teacher Disaggregates Many Functions CostVery expensiveULAs and Peer Tutors function as part of a “teaching team” at a much lower hourly cost EffectivenessHighly variable and often exhausting ULAs and Peer Tutors are trained to provide specific kinds of support CapacityClass size is fixed by tradition or physical classroom (“teaching load”) Class size can be increased without increasing faculty workload How to Get StartedNo 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