As teachers at Agora, our daily practice is not confined to the independent tasks of direct instruction, assessment, or communication. Rather, it is the unique combination of these tasks which leads to our ultimate goal, student achievement. We believed, primarily, that peer tutoring would enhance the communication component of our practice by delivering extra knowledge and practice through the unique perspectives and understandings of students concurrently enrolled in the course. In discussing whether or not we will continue to organize these supplemental, peer-led sessions for our chemistry students in the future, we focused our evaluation on the two main aspects we sought to influence in this experiment: student communication and achievement.
Student Communication
Student Achievement
Our Position
Changes We Will Make
Unfortunately, despite several outreach attempts and continued coercion, it seems we were unable to create enough interest in the program to track data which may have allowed us to form clear indications of achievement. The survey data we collected, however, suggests that students who did attend enjoyed and appreciated the experience; one committed student was even able to increase her score two whole letter grades!
Though it was short-lived, our tutors were able to interact with nearly 50 students in the space of only two weeks! Over the course of the entire semester, they worked with approximately 100 students; that is 20% of the students enrolled in the course! For us, this data demonstrates that we need not rely entirely on our own office hours and one-on-one remediation; our students have shown an interest and willingness to try working with other students to achieve their goals.
We know this program, if implemented at the right time, with the right support and the right incentives, could play a powerful role in enhancing short-term and long-term gains for students in this course. Its ultimate success is dependent only on an approach which is able to overcome some of the inherent obstacles to our distance education model. Such an approach will only be devised through time-tested trial and error.
Timing
We agree that a fair judgement of the value of this program must consider data collected from an entire school year. We expect that incorporating this established and tested program at the start of a new school year and carrying it throughout the year with consistency may enhance its intrigue and attention.
Incentive
We need to more completely discuss our incentive options for attendance. We started this program promising quiz and test retakes for those students who participated. However, very few, if any, students followed through and requested them.
Modeling The Process
In an effort to provide prospective participants the experience and benefits of working with their peers, we believe that modeling the process in our mandatory live sessions would be beneficial in our second round of implementation. In addition to increasing the use of automated phone calls, email blasts, and LMS announcements to improve visibility of the program, we plan to occasionally combine our scheduled live sessions, invite available tutors, and administer the peer tutor plan as outlined in this thesis. It is our hope that practicing the process in a comfortable and familiar environment will encourage more regular, voluntary participation.
Combining Our Efforts
It was not our expectation that only three of the five of us teaching this course would propel the legacy of this study. We believe that if all teachers played an equal role in supervising sessions and meeting with tutors, the sense of “chemistry community” and inclusion could be enhanced. Further, spreading the supervisory responsibilities over five people would help ease the live time commitments we have maintained for the duration of this study.