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At least
ONE professor at UCLA has solved the old tutoring problem
in General Education Physics. 'Mark' (call me Mark,
says his syllabus)
guarantees students at least a 'C' in the class. My
daughter is taking
Physics 10 at UCLA. The minimum requirement for a 'C'
grade is to
"show up for one of the two midterms" (sic.) and to
take the final. There
is no minimum grade on the tests for a C.
Granted I went to school in
the '60s, but I am pretty outraged at the
way instructors, even at
noted universities, are pandering to non-science
majors. Heaven forbid we should hurt their self esteems
by requiring them
to actually perform!
We all know that students in physics
classes sometimes need extra help.
This can be especially true for
students taking physics to fulfill
general-education requirements.
Something has come up here at Bluffton
College and I could sure use the
help of phys-l people.
At a recent meeting with the dean (of the
whole college), I was
chastised for not providing tutors for students
having problems. This
really shocked me. Am I completely out
of touch with what other
institutions are doing today? Are other
physics or science departments
using departmental money to pay for
personal tutors?
Before you respond, let me make it clear what I am
talking about.
Students needing help might imagine several ways of
getting it.
(1) See the professor during office hours.
(2) Go to a
recitation section led by a graduate student or
upper-level
student.
(3) Go to a "help desk" staffed by a
graduate student or upper-level
student.
(4) Get a personal tutor to
spend 2-4 hours per week helping one
student study, solve problems, write
lab reports.
At Bluffton College I am already doing options 1 through
3. However,
if a student asks for a personal tutor, I typically
recommend some good
physics students who might fulfill this task, but the
meeting times and
financial arrangements must be worked out between the
student-in-need
and the tutor.
I am now being told that I should
be paying for these private tutors
from my departmental student-assistant
budget. Mind you, my budget is
not being increased... therefore
this is one of those non-funded
mandates that descends from high.
We put about 250 students per year
through a general-education physics
course. I suspect that if personal
tutoring were available for
free, easily half of the students would ask
for it. If a tutor
worked with one student for one hour per day for
four days a week, and if
100 students asked for this, that would be 400
hours per week. At
minimum wage that would be $2000 per week.
Since our undergraduate
student work contracts are for 8 hours per
week, I would also have to
find about 50 tutors. Aside from that fact
that I don't have
anywhere near that many qualified students, can you
imagine how hard it
would be to train these tutors. As it stands now,
we have a hard
time teaching our "help desk" students to answer
questions
without actually doing the problem or writing the lab report
for the
student. We also work with the help-desk staff to make sure
they
know what is going on in class, in lab, and how we want the
students to
approach various problems or reports. That involves
working with
about 4 student helpers. I'm trying to imagine managing
this with
50 tutors?
I would be most interested in hearing which of the four
services you
provide at your institution. If there are different
services you
provide that I didn't mention, please describe. If you
have ball-park
knowledge of the cost of your "tutoring"
program, that would also be
helpful. I am interested both in what
is happening at large
institutions as well as
small.
Thanks,
Michael D. Edmiston,
Ph.D.
Phone/voice-mail:
419-358-3270
Professor of Chemistry &
Physics
FAX:
419-358-3323
Chairman, Science
Department
E-Mail
edmiston@bluffton.edu
Bluffton
College
280 West College Avenue
Bluffton, OH
45817
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