bellwether online tutoring presentation 2012
DESCRIPTION
HCC’s Online Tutoring Program:Improving Student SuccessTRANSCRIPT
HCC’s Online Tutoring Program:Improving Student Success
Stephen Levey, Ed.D.Associate Vice Chancellor, Academic Instruction
Deborah HardwickManager, Online Tutoring
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About Houston Community College . . .
Afr-Amer
Hispanic Asian White Other0
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40% Student Demographics by Ethnicity
• Educates more than 75,000 students per semester
• 1st for international student enrollment among U.S. community colleges
• Highly diverse student population:
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What Were We Looking to Do?
Use Online Tutoringto Increase:
Access Success
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Use Technology. Don’t Let it Use You!
“While technology is not a panacea, it must be an
integral part of any redesign focused on
increased completion.”
Nodine, T., Venezia, A., and Bracco, K. (2011) Changing Course:
A Guide to Increasing Student Completion in Community Colleges
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Operational Procedures Loop
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Assess
Do Decide
Plan
Develop a plan to implement service and measure the impact of online tutoring on student success.
Implement service and conduct quantitative
research.
Assess results of the program.
Implement improvements,
conduct additional research.
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Research Findings
• 937 tutoring sessions (units) observed
• For every one-unit increase in tutoring usage per semester, student GPA increased by approximately .05 points.
• Among all students observed:
GPA
Service Users 2.915
Non-Users 2.685
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Future Recommendationsfor Research
Increased Outreach
Track Demographic
Groups
Track Subject Areas
Study Effect on Retention and
Completion
Future Research
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Summary
Online Tutoring:
• Addresses two of the primary commitments/tenets of the community college – increased access and student success
• Addresses a large, diverse student population
• Uses technology instead of letting technology use us
• Implements the HCC institutional effectiveness model
• Uses research to validate effectiveness of the service and plan for the future
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And so it began …
• 2003 - Northwest College and Distance Ed began using an external online tutoring service.
• April, 2006 - The Academic Dean, Southwest College, asked English tutoring supervisor to investigate doing the same.
• April, 2006 – Meeting held with Tutors “R” Us sales rep and several English teachers. Problems with oversight uncovered. “Why can’t we do it ourselves?”
• Sept. 11, 2006 – We went live.
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Understanding HCC
To understand the complexity we had to overcome in order to develop our online
tutoring program,
it is necessary to visualize the organizational structure of the institution.
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Basic Numbers
In September 2006, it took us 11 days to receive 100 papers.
Today, we average about 100 submissions per day.
Since September 11, 2006 …• 29,448 students have registered and used the system.• Tutors have worked 34,865 hours.• Tutors have responded to 63,226 student submissions.
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Challenges
1. Money
2. Territoriality
3. Supervision
4. 14 different schedules at 14 tutoring centers
5. 5 different organizational modes
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Challenges (continued)
6. Varying skill sets from tutors
7. Varying levels of supervision and oversight
8. No coordination among programs
9. Minimal record keeping
10. To get started, we had to get the support of…
Five academic deans,
Five workforce deans,
Five student service deans,
Five presidents,
Five English department chairs, and
Five English tutoring supervisors.
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Our Pre-Launch Goals
• Make English tutoring available all the time to everyone.
• Increase student’s skills and comfort levels.
• Save overhead and increase efficiency, thus making more money available for tutor salaries.
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Critical Decisions
Technology
We choose to work with Askonline.net, a company that only provides tutoring support technology. It offers a variety of formats, archiving, reporting and tech support. We look at Askonline as a partner, not just a vendor.
Content (Tutors)
We choose to hire current and recent ex-HCC faculty as tutors.
Marketing
We choose to market ourselves very aggressively among all our constituent groups.
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Our Constituents
Students
Faculty
HCC in General
The Online Tutoring Profession
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Money Matters
When all the costs are added up…
Self-staffed online tutoring costs less than externally-staffed for-hire companies, and the non-monetary rewards are so much greater.
As a result of our increasing efficiency and knowledge…
Our per-contact costs have fallen from $12.65 / contact in fiscal 2008/2009 to $10.23 today.
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Find-a-Tutor
The Chancellor’s Innovation Fund
provided a small grant so we could develop a searchable database of all tutoring at HCC.
(Screenshots of Find-a-Tutor can be found in your packets.)
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The Tutoring Toolbar
We developed a toolbar that allows for consistency and speed in commenting on papers.
We share this toolbar with faculty at HCC and schools around the country that use self-staffed online tutoring.
(The toolbar and an explanation of the buttons can be found in your packet.)
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Summary
Managed appropriately, online tutoring is an economical, efficient, personal and professional answer to student needs,
and it works!
Online tutoring is the future!