The Best Resources for Peer Tutoring

By Tamiera Vandegrift on November 20, 2017

Peer tutoring is a fun, educational experience that will also provide a ton of benefits after graduation. As a tutor, you will have the chance to broaden your expertise in a subject matter that interests you, work closely with other faculty members on your campus, and develop some pretty sweet leadership skills.

The experience of helping your peers through their academic struggles is also incredibly rewarding. But what happens when you, the tutor, need a little help?

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Being a tutor doesn’t mean that you aren’t a human being first. It’s okay not to have all of the answers you need. After all, you’re a student too. By seeking help, you are not admitting defeat. There are a ton of resources available to help the tutoring process. Keep reading to learn more about these resources and improve your tutoring skills.

Resources for Conducting Tutoring Sessions

In the beginning, you were just a regular student listening to an hour and a half long lecture just like everyone else. Now, you’re conducting your own sessions teaching that same material for other students. While it’s definitely cool to be essentially holding your own office hours, this might put you in a weird position.

Should you conduct the session as though you are a study buddy or as if you are a professor working through an individual lesson session?

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Online resources exist to help peer tutors be the best they can be from day one. Before you start tutoring, or perhaps the night before a session, take some time to review some of these resources to learn about some ways to conduct your sessions in a way that feels most comfortable to you.

For instance, Penn State offers an online interactive guide to establishing rapport with students and tips on how to get the most out of a session. For those that learn best by doing, the website also offers a brief role-playing activity.

Some colleges and universities offer training and workshops for student peer tutors to attend. At Florida State University, there is an English elective course designed for teaching students how to become an effective peer tutor in the university’s reading and writing center.

At Iowa State University, the Academic Success Center offers a series of workshops designed to prepare peer tutors for certain situations in the tutoring center. For instance, some of these workshops discuss conflict resolution, speaking up, cultural competency, and leading tutoring sessions.

Every university is different, but every university is passionate about giving their students the best resources for the best education — especially peer tutors.

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Resources for Homework Help

You might be a tutor, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have all of the answers.

If you’re in the middle of a tutoring session and you come across an algebra problem that you’ve never seen before or if you’re in the middle of peer reviewing a student’s paper when you suddenly come across a formatting style different from anything your Writing 1101 professor taught you, don’t worry. It’s okay to admit to your student that you don’t have all of the answers. Doing so will humanize you and make you far less intimidating to the student. When in doubt, use the Internet to figure it out.

For mathematics, Algebra2Go and WolframAlpha both provide assistance in solving tricky math problems. Algebra2Go offers video demonstrations, worksheets, and material for your student to take home and review. WolframAlpha is essentially Google to the thousandth degree. Type in whatever is confounding you and the website will find a solution for you.

For different topics, such as science, engineering, or humanities, give Khan Academy a try. The website offers a ton of different lessons on a plethora of subjects. For peer tutoring in the writing center, the OWL at Purdue has everything you need. With this website, you will be able to understand every grammar rule, every citation style, and every formatting technique. No matter how daunting a problem may seem in the tutoring center, there is an online resource there to help you.

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When it comes to peer tutoring, there are a ton of resources available to tutors in order to help them develop personally and professionally. Some of these resources are on campus in your tutoring center waiting to be discovered, like workshops and training sessions. Others are on the world wide web waiting to be uncovered when you need them.

Peer tutoring is an excellent, rewarding experience founded upon the personal and professional development you undergo during each shift. So what happens when you, the tutor, need a little help? Check your resources. Do your homework. Do what you need to do. Deep breath. You got this.

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