Shepard Academic Resource Center
Pilots Prevent
April 6, 2021
With the one-year anniversary of COVID-19 quarantines and life as we knew it changing completely, our community has been reflecting on things we’ve lost, ways we’ve adapted, and things that have changed. Jeffrey White, Learning Commons administrator, and Sophie Downing ’21, peer educator, reflect on what the Learning Commons has gained during the pandemic.
“From day one, when we knew we were leaving campus, we immediately started training and transitioning to online training,” says White. They trained the tutors before they left campus, and shortly thereafter. The online tutoring appointments were available immediately when learning went remote Over the summer, they developed synchronous and asynchronous online tutoring sessions and new pilot programs to support specific courses.
“We’ve taken the pandemic and remote learning as an opportunity to create new programs online,” says White. They developed PAL, or Peer Assisted Learning groups, which are facilitated hour-long collaborative learning sessions for some of the more difficult courses at UP, including PHY 204/205, MTH 141, and NRS 325/326. They launched completely online, with peer educators completing their training in August 2020 and working Fall Semester. The sessions were a success—and repeated sessions were key. “For students who went to four or five sessions over the semester, we saw significant correlation to higher GPA,” says White. The PAL groups continued into spring and will continue to be a part of the post-pandemic Learning Commons offerings.
Another new program they launched is an embedded tutoring program for 200-level accounting courses. The tutor is thoroughly trained and attends the classes with the students, works closely with faculty, is enrolled on the class Moodle page, and offers tutoring hours outside of class. The program has been well received and has recently added structured study sessions with one of the embedded tutors.
The Learning Commons goes beyond offering help and support to students who pursue tutoring—they’ve offered expanded support and resources for the peer educators themselves. Downing recently launched a virtual community—called Power of Peers—for peer educators through Slack. Using Slack allows the peer educators to have a space that is by them, for them. It’s a space for them to share their experiences, success stories, lessons learned, resources, and more. “It’s about community building,” she says, “and it has the capacity to grow in future years.”
Adding online components to their offerings has allowed the Learning Commons to be more flexible and reach more students. “Having the option for online appointments is really nice,” says Downing. “For students who live off campus, or for group work, finding a time for everyone to be person; those can be hard to schedule. Leaving the online component as an option would be great, and the Slack group will continue to be online.”
White agrees that the pandemic has inspired creative new resources that expand what the Learning Commons offers. “People often pit online and face-to-face learning against each other, but they add value to each other,” he says. “There has been struggle, but we’ve also made discoveries that we have greater flexibility to serve and build community.” With the increased data they’ve been able to track program success. The Learning Commons normally receives high ratings in reviews from students, but this last year was better than ever, with 95% of students reporting increased confidence in working with the tutored material.
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