Utilizing Tutors in the Classroom: An Extension of Supplemental Instruction to Increase Student Performance and Retention

• Main Author: Evelyn Doman
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Georgia Southern University 2014-06-01
• Series: Georgia Educational Researcher
• Subjects: English as a Foreign Language (EFL); Supplemental Instruction; tutoring
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gerjournal/vol11/iss1/5

Supplemental Instruction (SI) has widely been used in university classrooms around the world. However, many obstacles face SI – including low student attendance, lack of faculty support, and recognition of today’s online generation. This research helps to fill the gap in SI by posing to solve the problems mentioned above by extending SI into the classroom with the assistance of tutors. In response to the growing number of students and lack of space and instructors to accommodate the exploding enrollment, an initiative called “Tutors in the Classroom (TIC)” was started at a 4-year liberal arts college near Atlanta. TIC involved placing professional tutors, who were part-time and full-time employees of the on-campus tutoring labs and writing centers, into pre-college courses for matriculated students in English, Reading, English for Academic Purposes, and mathematics. Results of the now 2-year program show that not only are students’ skills enhanced, but that retention levels and average GPA’s have also increased. Grants have been awarded for the TIC program, and now attempts with adapting the program for students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in a university in Macau, China are underway. TIC has been recommended as an extension of Supplemental Instruction to develop students’ higher-order thinking skills as well.