Online Tutoring FIG Minutes
Minutes:
Minutes of the First Meeting of the Online Tutoring FIG
March 24, 2010 in Room 455, 9:30-10:30
Present: Michael Thompson, Angie Magallon, Ramona Silver, Wanda Wong, Cristina
Moon, Michael Langdon
At the beginning of this meeting, I distributed this list of questions that I thought we
would discuss at our first meeting:
1. How can we gather information about the discipline-specific learning needs of
our students (especially when we don’t have representation from every
discipline)? Do we have to focus on every discipline, or just the disciplines that
will be involved in our pilot?
2. How are we going to do “external research” about online tutoring in our
disciplines?
3. Do we want to further investigate the “free” online tutoring option that Marcia
Corcoran discovered?
4. When/how can we meet again? How can we arrange something that is
convenient to more participants?
Question 4 was addressed first. Ramona said that Lisa could set up a conference call and
that Lisa perhaps should be participating in this FIG. We also discussed the possibility of
having Friday meetings or having asynchronous meetings via Blackboard.
With regard to Question 1 (regarding the discipline-specific learning needs of our
students), Michael Thompson suggested that we focus on our individual disciplines but
come up with a template that is broad enough that other disciplines could adopt it.
We considered whether or not we have representation from enough disciplines. We have
instructors from world languages, English, history, psychology, humanities, computer
science, and business. We would like to have someone from math. I agreed to contact
Ming, Tram, or Cindy Stubblebine to see if we can get a math instructor to join us.
(There seems to be room in the budget for this since I accidentally accounted for seven
participants and we only have six.) Wanda suggested that Jonathan Tragott might be a
good person to have on this FIG.
We discussed the fact that this online tutoring program would assist not just online
students but students in all of our classes.
I explained that Marcia had told me that another college has set up online tutoring
through CCC Confer, which is free. The proposal for our online tutoring FIG estimates
that one year of TutorTrac will cost $6,000. Wanda questioned this and said that $6,000
seemed very cheap to her. She wondered if there is a cap on the number of students who
can be served for $6,000.00.
In order to assess the discipline-specific tutoring needs of our students, it was suggested
that we survey our colleagues, our students, and our tutors.
Ramona suggested that there are general skills that our students lack across the board that
apply to all disciplines, including critical reading skills, critical thinking skills, and
writing skills. Writing skills are especially important for online students.
Someone wondered how online tutors would be different from the learning assistants who
work in our classes. We agreed that these learning assistants are far more familiar with
the specific content of their course, whereas online tutors need to be able to offer
assistance to students in any course.
We wondered what tutoring of reading looked like (and how it might work online). It
was suggested that tutors offer general help with reading strategies rather than help
understanding specific texts. Michael Thompson said that it has been his observation that
if the answer to a question is too general, students aren’t interested. Sometimes they just
want to know the answer. Oftentimes we have to use the specific to teach the general.
Someone wondered whether or not the same reading strategies apply to textbooks in all
disciplines. Will the strategies that we use with students for humanities or social science
textbooks also apply to science textbooks?
Someone recalled a presentation that Ming had done on reading skills and math/science
textbooks and suggested that we invite him to join our group and/or attend one of our
meetings so that we might question him about this.
Ramona suggested that we might have three types of tutors: science, math, and reading.
The expectations of our tutors will need to be defined clearly.
Wanda said that there might be three tiers to the tutoring process: (1) a greeter who will
talk to the student, figure out his/her needs, and refer the student to a tutor in a specific
discipline; (2) a tutor in a specific discipline who would try to answer the student’s
question; (3) a more specific tutor like a learning assistant assigned to a specific course.
Someone joked that this was starting to sound like customer service over the telephone.
We discussed whether the tutoring would be synchronous or asynchronous. If done
through a discussion board, what would be the turnaround time for the student asking the
question? If students have to wait too long for answers to their questions, they might not
be interested. Ramona suggested that we talk to Abdullah about setting up an in-house
live chat without using external software.
Michael Thompson wondered whether or not it was possible to set up tutoring through
Blackboard, but most of us thought that this would only serve students in online or
Blackboard-enhanced classes. Wanda wondered whether or not it would be possible to
enroll every Chabot student in a tutoring course.
I wondered how students who were seeking help understanding specific texts could share
those texts with the tutors in an online format. Michael Thompson said that most
textbooks are available online now, though this wouldn’t be of much use for English
classes, which don’t use textbooks. Several people suggested that tutors can’t really offer
much help with specific texts anyway and that these are the kinds of questions that
teachers should deal with during office hours. This led to a discussion of the kinds of
questions students can bring to tutors. Angie wanted to know if online tutoring programs,
such as TutorTrac and CCC Confer, set up parameters that help students phrase their
questions in a way that tutors can respond to. I said that I would ask Jan or Dennis about
this.
At 10:30, a class needed room 455 and we had to adjourn quickly. We didn’t set up a
time for our next meeting, but in the hallway Ramona said she would talk to Lisa about
setting up a conference call or a Blackboard discussion board.
Minutes for the Second Meeting of the Online Tutoring FIG
Friday, April 16, 2010 via Conference Call
Present: Michael Thompson, Jan Novak, Wanda Wong, Cristina Moon, Michael
Langdon, Aldrian Estepa
I started by reviewing a memo that Jan Novak wrote about her conversation with Ray
Sanchez at Fresno City College. Fresno City College wasn’t happy with Ask online, and
they were also unhappy with Tutor Track. After giving up on Tutor Track, they used
their own customized software for a while and then went to Wimba (a type of software
that Cristina recommended to all of us via email). Jan said that using Wimba would cost
us hundreds of thousands of dollars. Cristina pointed out that Pronto is a new Wimba
product. She remembers learning from Wimba that it would only cost $5,000 per year to
use this software, but the process for getting set up would be complicated.
We then moved to the question of whether or not we can do online tutoring without
voice. Jan did a survey a while back that showed that 35% of students would be happy
with text only communication, and 65% wanted to be able to talk to a tutor by voice. Jan
pointed out that the survey was only of five online sections.
Michael Thompson said that “text only” could mean a wide variety of things: email,
chat, a discussion board. He thinks that some of these options are “more conversational”
than others. Cristina thinks that for certain subjects, voice could be extremely helpful.
With more complex questions, students might find it easier to ask their questions with
voice.
Wanda agreed to talk to Ming about joining our FIG.
We then moved back to our conversation about the discipline-specific learning needs of
our students vis a vis tutoring. Michael Thompson said that he had been doing some
history-specific tutoring for the past few semesters. In his experience, students seek
assignment-specific help from tutors. When he tried to introduce general principles that
they could use for all kinds of learning situations, they weren’t interested. Jan and I both
said that we had had similar experiences. Jan said she had learning assistants in her
online classes last fall who functioned more or less as tutors, and they were asked these
kinds of assignment-specific questions. Michael Thompson pointed out that students
often don’t know what their basic skills learning needs are, and if offered workshops on
reading skills, for instance, many of them think they don’t need these workshops. It’s
only when they have difficulty with a specific assignment or exam that they realize that
they need help. This is why the tutoring needs to be discipline-specific, because students
who get general basic skills advice are not likely to find it helpful and may not come
back. Cristina said that when students go to get help, they want help right away. The
students who go to PATH are seeking help with specific assignments.
I said that I wondered what kinds of guidelines tutors were given for working with
students. Wanda said that we don’t want tutors giving out answers or working problems
for students. I wondered whether or not there were guidelines for the tutors that we have
on campus. I mentioned that Angie had raised this question at the last meeting and
wanted to know if these online tutoring programs set any parameters for students so that
they could ask questions that tutors are allowed to answer.
Wanda said that the tutors need to be trained to ask the right questions of the students so
that the students understand why they’re “stuck.”
Michael Thompson said that this would have to be part of the discipline-specific training.
He said that he had been using chat in his online class this semester, and that his learning
assistant, after observing him asking questions of his students in chat, was able to lead
online discussions herself asking the same kinds of questions. Any tutor has to be taught
how to “lead students to those answers without providing the answers themselves.”
Wanda said that faculty within each discipline need to mentor tutors within their
discipline to teach them to ask these kinds of questions. Cristina said that world
languages has a tutor-training program of this sort. She said that she noticed that students
seek tutoring without bringing the materials that they were working on. So Cristina
created “help folders” with the ten most difficult problems that students have, along with
activities that tutors could use to help students with those problems. She also had tutors
go to observe classes so that they could watch teachers teach and answer questions.
Michael Thompson said that tutors need to realize their limitations. Sometimes they
should say, “I’ve helped you as much as I can. Now you need to go talk to your
instructor.”
I wondered about the training that tutors are currently getting and said that the training
that we give to online tutors is probably not that different from the training that our
current tutors are getting. Jan said that when she began talking to Dennis about this a
while back, her understanding was that we would use the same tutors that we currently
have on campus and just train them to provide the same kinds of help online.
Michael Thompson said that the degree to which tutors are trained in specific disciplines
varies across the campus. Some really good history students have been recommended to
be tutors, and these students know the classes they’ve taken really well but haven’t been
trained to give broader help to history students. He wondered if we were talking about
tutors or learning assistants. I said that we were talking about tutors but that there was
overlap. Michael Thompson said that he was trying to figure out what broader
knowledge tutors would need that would apply to history in general.
Wanda wanted to know if any of the software we were considering would allow the
student and the tutor to look together at a problem.
Michael Thompson, Cristina, and Wanda all said that they’d like to see a demonstration
of the tutoring program at another college.
I said that I wanted us to be able to look at tutoring programs together. I will try to
contact some other colleges and ask if we can have access to their tutoring programs. But
I said that I thought we should have a live meeting so that we can look at these programs
together.
Cristina had to leave at this point.
Aldrian asked if we could find out what features other colleges were looking for when
they adopted programs. I said that Jan had put together a list of questions to ask other
colleges when we approach them. Jan said that we should definitely talk to other
colleges, and that the man she had spoken to at Fresno City College gave her a list of
other colleges that we should talk to.
Michael said that he wouldn’t know what questions he has until he sees how some of
these programs work.
Jan said that we could have a demonstration of Tutor Track, and that we could probably
do the same with Wimba.
Jan suggested that it might be helpful for the people in this FIG to write up what they
think are the ten most common questions that would be brought to a tutor. This would
help us figure out what kind of software we would need to address these questions.
Wanda said that we could also ask our current tutors what the most common questions
were.
I mentioned that we had talked about designing a survey of faculty, but that we might
also survey our tutors.
I asked what else we might ask tutors and teachers in a survey. Jan said that she would
want to ask whether online and on campus students have different needs. Wanda said
that we could do a survey of online and on campus LAs to find out if students are
bringing different kinds of questions to them.
I said that I wanted to see a demo of Ohlone or whatever college it is that’s using CCC
Confer. The good thing about CCC Confer is that it has voice, chat, and a whiteboard,
and it’s free. Jan said that I could also just call CCC Confer to get information about
which schools are using it for tutoring.
Wanda said that she thought we should all be physically in the same room to have a demo
of different software. I said I agreed that this was necessary and that we should perhaps
have a longer session with multiple demos at some point later in the semester—probably
on a Friday.
I brought up the text vs. voice question again. I recalled that Cristina thought voice was
important and that Michael Thompson didn’t seem so sure that it was necessary. Michael
Thompson said that he wasn’t saying that voice wasn’t important but that there are
different types of text communication. His students are constantly texting, and maybe
text would work well for some students.
I said that I liked the idea of students having to use writing to ask questions, but that I
suspected that a lot of students would be more comfortable using voice. Wanda said that
text-based disciplines like English and history are different from some other kinds of
disciplines. With math, there are formulas that are hard for students to discuss through
text. Michael Thompson said that a white board might make it possible to address these
formulas without voice.
I asked whether anyone knew about any of the requirements for getting apportionment.
Jan said that the person she spoke to at Fresno City College said that he thought Ed code
required that tutoring be synchronous to get apportionment, that it had to be archived, and
that it had to be supervised by an instructor. It also has to be secure so that it was clear
that the person being tutored was a student. Wanda said that one way to do this might be
to have the student log in with a password. Jan said that this was one of the advantages
of Tutor Track: it connects to Banner and students can log in with their W numbers. Jan
said that there are other interpretations of Ed code and that perhaps a small group should
look into this question. She said that we need to figure out what we need to be doing to
be effective in tutoring and that that would determine the software we use and that once
we decide on software we can discuss any problems with getting apportionment.
I raised the question of future meetings. Ramona sent me a wiki that a committee at LPC
was using to have a meeting. I said that I was a little confused by this wiki, but that this
is one option for future meetings. We could also have an asynchronous meeting via
Blackboard. I also said I wanted to use CCC Confer’s “Meet and Confer” option at some
point, though I was concerned that it was too complicated. Jan said that it was
challenging for students but that we could probably figure out how to use it for a meeting.
3rd and 4th Meeting
Our third meeting took place on a Blackboard discussion forum. The entire discussion is
available to anyone who is interested in viewing it.
Our fourth meeting took place via CCC Confer, on May 14, 2010, at 1:00 p.m. The
entire meeting is archived on CCC Confer's website. To review this meeting, look for an
archived meeting called "Online Tutoring FIG."
Minutes of Our Fifth (2 ½ hour) Meeting
May 25, 2010, Board Room
We met in the Board Room, and after some technical difficulties (no batteries in the
remote keyboard), we had a presentation from Michelle Taramasco from CCC
Confer. Michelle explained to us how other colleges were using CCC Confer for online
tutoring. She said that CCC Confer can set up private tutoring “rooms” for us on their
website, which is available 24/7. We can put links to these rooms on a website, or we can
email the links to students, along with the phone number they need to dial for voice
communication. VOIP is also a possibility, or a hybrid of phone and VOIP. Close
captioning is available, and rooms can be “locked” so that there is privacy for tutor and
tutee. Sessions can be archived and a link sent to the student so that the student can
review the tutoring session later. This also makes it easy for administrators to
observe/supervise tutoring.
For math tutoring, Michelle recommended a Wacom tablet, which can be plugged into a
computer. The tutor can write on this tablet to demonstrate how to do math problems.
CCC Confer will train tutors, and they have a client services department that can help us
with technical issues.
Michelle tried to show us some youtube videos of tutoring sessions, but we couldn’t
watch them because the computer in the Board Room didn’t have the required plugins. We wondered how often students would encounter this kind of technical issue when
seeking tutoring online.
After our meeting with Michelle, we met Jeanne Guerin online. She runs the Online
Writing Center at Sierra College, and she uses CCC Confer for online tutoring. We dialed
her number and logged in to the website that she emailed to us before hand. After a few
minutes we lost our connection, both to the website and the phone line. After we
reconnected with her, she explained that Sierra College is doing repairs to its
phone/computer system this week (the two are linked) and that this is an anomaly. It
doesn’t normally happen with students. She showed us how students get into the CCC
Confer tutoring room through a link on a Blackboard site. Every student at Sierra
automatically has access to a Blackboard tutoring shell. Then she showed us how she can
upload a paper that she and the student can look at, discuss, and revise at the same
time. Students make appointments through a scheduling program available through
Rich.com. It’s cheap, she said, only $715.00 per year.
After our meeting with Michelle, the group talked about our future plans. Wanda said that
she still wanted to see TutorTrac, and everyone agreed, so I said that I would set up a
meeting for the following week.
We also talked about a timeline for the tutoring pilot. After some discussion, we agreed
to make it a goal to have the tutoring pilot running by the fourth week of the fall
semester, though we all agreed that this might not work out for practical reasons. We also
agreed to include a fully online English course, a hybrid math course, and a face to face
social science course. Michael Thompson agreed to allow his history courses to
participate in the pilot, but he said that he would like to include all three sections because
only a small number of students in these classes seek tutoring and we would need all
three sections to have a large enough sample of students.
Minutes of Our Sixth (1 hour, 40 minute) Meeting
June 1, 2010, Via Conference Call
For the first hour, we had a presentation by Jon Smith from TutorTrac, who showed us
how TutorTrac can be used to track and tutor students. He showed us how students
schedule tutoring sessions, log in, etc., and how instructors and administrators can search
for information about students who have been tutored. He also showed us how the
TutorTrac whiteboard works. Unlike CCC Confer, there is no voice option with
TutorTrac. All communication is through text. Unlike CCC Confer, students and tutors
cannot simultaneously view and edit documents on the whiteboard. They also cannot
simultaneously view a website on the whiteboard. However, TutorTrac does provide
tutors with a way to type in mathematical formulas. The initial purchase of TutorTrac is
$2,495.00. (This is a one-time purchase, and TutorTrac would be ours for life.) After the
first year, support is $749.00 per year. Whiteboard is $1,495.00, and an additional $50.00
for support.
After the demo, we talked for another 40 minutes. We decided almost immediately that
CCC Confer was a better option. In many ways, it seems to be superior to TutorTrac, and
it’s free. Voice communication between tutor and tutee is possible, and it’s much easier
for tutor and tutee to share documents through CCC Confer. TutorTrac does seem to be
better for math tutoring, but math tutoring is possible through CCC Confer, so we
decided that this is our best option. With the money we save by not purchasing
TutorTrac, we can purchase scheduling software and possibly Wacom tablets (or
something else) for math tutoring.
We talked about whether we would want to purchase scheduling software (like the
software available from Rich.com that is used at Sierra College). I pointed out that
Saddleback College doesn’t use such software. Instead, students just schedule
appointments by calling the tutoring center. However, there might be staffing issues in
the fall that will make scheduling tutoring appointments by the phone cumbersome and
frustrating for students. Cristina pointed out that students would be more likely to get
tutoring if they could easily schedule tutoring online at any time. So we decided that we
would probably purchase scheduling software.
We also talked about whether or not we wanted the tutoring to be available after normal
tutoring hours. Online students will probably want to receive tutoring after hours, when
the tutoring center is closed. As Michael Thompson pointed out, if we really want to
increase access to tutoring, we need to make it available at these times. A possible
problem with this is that Ed. Code requires that tutoring be supervised by an instructor,
and for this reason, most colleges make sure that online tutors work on campus when an
instructor supervisor is present. Michael Thompson suggested that we might get around
this by having an on-call online supervisor who would be available if the tutor needed
help. Also, because all tutoring sessions through CCC Confer can be recorded and
archived, the tutoring sessions can be reviewed by a supervisor after the fact.
We will need to identify the tutors that we want to participate in this pilot and make sure
that they are trained. Michael Thompson has a learning assistant that he will want to use
as the online tutor for his history classes. We discussed possibly having her do some of
the tutoring from home after regular tutoring hours. (She has been doing this already as a
learning assistant.)
We then discussed our timeline for the setting up a pilot in the fall. At our previous
meeting, we had decided to try to get the pilot running by the fourth week of the fall
semester, but many of us now wonder whether or not that will be possible. We agreed
that we should try to meet in early August to get started, tentatively choosing August 10th
as a meeting date. Ramona said that she would contact Lisa Ulibarri and Mike Seaton to
see if they could meet with us on those dates. I agreed to contact Michelle Taramasco to
find out whether it would be possible to train tutors in early August. (After the meeting, I
called her, and she said that CCC Confer’s staff is available year round and that they can
train tutors—and assist us in other ways—in early August. She also said that she could
share more information with us about using CCC Confer for math tutoring.)
Cristina said that she thought that tutors were required to attend a training session in early
August and that we should find out when that training session would be. I said that I
would contact Angie to find out more about this.
Websites: www.cccconfer.org