This document proposes expanding tutoring training at the University of New Mexico-Valencia Campus. It identifies four types of students that tutors may encounter: attention-seeking, inattentive, unprepared, and uncivil students. The author argues tutoring benefits students, tutors, and teachers by improving communication skills. Implementing expanded training could help create independent learners and build a community where students tutor each other. The proposal recommends identifying attention-seeking students to lead sessions and involving master tutors to present on their projects. It also suggests free training for prospective tutors to prepare future employees.

1. Spring 2014 Master Tutoring Project Final Report
Tutoring: Proposal for Expanding
Training
Juan J Faria Briceno
Learning Center
The University of New Mexico- Valencia Campus
Advisor: Lucille Farrington
February 28, 2014

2. Table of Contents
1-Introduction
Tutoring techniques are used every day in our daily life. How many times we need to
help people
During a day? How many times we explain something to anyone? The act of tutoring is
our everyday life. When a tutor gets training to assist students, they are learning is how to face
life, problem and issues. It has been shown that tutoring has increased grades. According to
Martha Maxwell, “ Some studies have found that students with relatively high abilities ot those

3. with more experience in college profit most from tutoring […] Students at all levels if
achievement who received tutoring earn significantly higher grades in statistics than those
receiving no tutoring” (Maxwell 4). The fact of helping others increases students’ abilities to
communicate, identify, and solve problem more efficiently. Therefore, learning how to be a tutor
can make better individuals, students and human being. For example, one person with tutoring
training can identify problems and solve them faster.
This document will provide the examples, situations, and experiences that are related
with tutoring. The ultimate goal is to make people realize how important tutor training is to
tutors, students and any person that interact with any other.
2-Types of Students
In order to relate living experiences with tutoring, I will first describe what kind of
students there are. According too many sources and many professionals in the field, there are
many types of students; however I will be using Wilbert J McKeachie’s definition of types of
students. Mckeachie describe many other facts about students that are relevant to his book called
Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and Universities Teachers.
According to McKeachie, “[…] four types of challenging behaviors that students
may exhibit in your classroom at some point during the school term […]” (McKeachie’s

4. Teaching Tips). The first student describe by him is The Attention-Seeking, discussion-
dominating student. He describes them as, “These students want to be heard… and they want to
be heard often. Whether or not these students have something of substance to add, it’s important
to maintain a balanced discussion, so that all students feel comfortable adding to the
conversation” (McKeachie’s Teaching Tips).
The second type of student describe by McKeachie is the Inattentive student, which
students could be not helpful to the flow of the SI-tutoring session. These kinds of students
are describe by him as, “Some students are apt to drift off into their own thoughts, stare into
their smartphones, or talk with classmates in the middle of your lecture. Not only do they miss
out on what you’re saying, they often disrupt the students around them as well” (McKeachie’s
Teaching Tips).
Another type of student is the unprepared student. In my opinion, these could
be the higher porcentage of students that are in the classroom. It does not mean that
they are bad students but most of the students don’t have the habit of preparing
before each lecture. These kind of student are describe by McKeachie as, “We all
occasionally have “those days” when we’re not as prepared as we’d want or need to be.
However, some students make a habit of skipping the reading, viewing, listening, or other
assignments you’ve intended as pre-class work” (McKeachie’s Teaching Tips).
Last type of student is the uncivil and disrespectful students. I personally have not faced
too many of these kind of student, but there are some cases in our everyday tutoring job. This
kind of student could have a negative effect in the class, but there are ways of managing them.
These four types of students are not all that could be described; however it will serve
as the context of this project. On top of that, these four different types could be
general and could be broken in other types.

5. 3-Relating Kind of Student with Tutoring
In order to be successful in this job (Tutor), we have to be preparing to face multiple situations
with students. As UNM employees, we are required to provide help to student as a customer.
This fact can give us more challenges when helping one student. Therefore, it is important for us
to be preparing for dealing with both usual and extraordinary situations that could happen in SI
sessions.
After knowing these kinds of students, a tutor could identify different students’ type. This will
help tutors to address problem in the tutoring session in a better way. For example, in many
cases, students come to SI session without having a right definition of what is it. This in my

6. opinion is one of the hardest thing that tutor faces with a group of students. If we do not clarify
what is an SI, students will change the method of running a SI. Most likely, they want you to
answer there question without reasoning the problem related to the material.
Identifying students types can be useful to the tutor. The attention- seeking, discussion-
dominating students could start the SI. Since, students like attention; tutors start the SI session by
involving them in the topic to work. These students could lead different group in the classroom;
helping other student to get confident with the class and the concepts or material. By involving
the attention-seeking students, tutors could release pressure on the SI flow. Then they can
communicate and give help to other types of students.
According to Deborah Hicks, who edited the book Discourse, Learning and Schooling, social
interaction in the classroom is crucial for the success of students. She stated, “This view of
relations between teacher and learner, expert and novice, is radically proximal one in which there
is conjoint participation and influence, one in which no mover is unmoved” (Discourse,
Learning and Schooling 29). Therefore, the interaction and active participation of the 4 types of
students in the SI’s is crucial to increase the passing rates and communication skills in the class.
4-Tutoring As Living Experience
Tutoring could benefit students, tutors, and teachers in many ways. As stated the communication
between individual (teacher-students) can help the abilities of students. Also, this fact could be
applied to teachers and tutors.
Universities prepare us to be successful in life. However, there are many facts that are taught in
school indirectly. Obviously, the main idea to take a class is to learn the material, yet they also
teach us how to address situations in different circumstances including communication skills,
reasoning, identifying the problem, solving difficult situations, body language, and many other
things could be indirectly learn from classes.

7. All these characteristics will be crucial for students to be successful in life. This is why I
consider tutoring as one of the strongest tools to create successful people. The fact of helping
other students to increase their grades or to pass the class could benefit in communication skills,
reasoning, identifying the problem, solving difficult situations, body language, and many other
skills.
If one related tutoring with our everyday life, that individual could find solutions to
problems/issues his/her own life. For example, people communicate with other people every day.
This relates our life to other individuals; individuals who have different styles. Individuals can be
defensive, offensive, passive, a hard-worker, and quiet and other personality’s styles. In the end,
we have to identify it in order to have positive- concise communication. The same idea is to have
effective communication between tutors- tutees. Tutors need to identify the students learning
style, personality and other things to address the tutoring session in an effective way.
I personally think that training given to us could be for students too. If we start teaching students
how to help other students and handle certain situations, we could get positive results, however
there are going to be students not willing to learn from the training. Always, we will face hard-
worker and lazy students, but after we raise the level of knowledge in our school in how to help
other students, we will create independent students.
It will take time to create a system where students know how to help each other as tutor, but
eventually we will be able to increase the tutoring level of the training since we will have a
community that can help each other. Then, we can focus in new ideas that could increase our
passing rates. Tutors are going to be seen more as mentor and students will address them with
better idea of how to use their help.
Tutoring has helped me to solve many problems in my life. In the end, as a tutor we want to help
student to be independent learner; therefore, they could be successful without our help. If we
think philosophically, it is the same idea that we want with our children or new generation. We
want them to be independent enough to be successful, so by learning how to be a tutor could
increase the self-teem of a student, improve their helping skill and increase communication skill;
three characteristic that will create and independent learner and independent individual.

8. 5-How to Implement the Expanding Training
In this part of the project I will explain how to implement the expanding training to students in
general. Obviously, this will take time to generate results in the classrooms and the SI. In order
to be able to be successful in this plan multiple steps have to be completed in order to succeed.
The first step to be applied is applied in the first training. I proposed to mention in the first
training that we as responsible to create independent learner, we need to use any extra time in the
tutoring session to tell students how they could be a tutor for other students. As mention in part 3
and 4 of the project, Students consider attention-seeking could be the first that tutors need to
identify to start creating future tutors. As I have experience, tutees with attention-seeking
characteristics like to be pointed as hard worker in the group. Tutors need to identify these

9. students and start the process of creating a future tutor. Basically, give them advice to help other
students in the classroom. If teacher agree, we can recognize with extra point those students that
help other students in the classroom and the SIs.
The second major step to implement the expanding training is done by the Advance Tutors that
are completing their master projects. I think that the change is made from the inside of our staff.
Basically, if tutors learn in training from other tutors, they can start having knowledge in
presenting their ideas. Therefore, I would think that 20 to 30 minutes of training could be
dedicated to the master projects and presented in the group of new tutors. This process of Master
tutors presenting their project could encourage new tutors to work harder in their tutors ideas. Of
course, it is important for new tutors to learn the process of tutoring before generate ideas.
The last step applied in my opinion will include more funding to be done, however it can be a
mechanism that could benefit the Tutoring Centers. Tutors come and go easily. By the time they
are going to graduate, they need to find new jobs and new generation of tutors comes across in
the tutoring centers. One of the biggest challenges that I have seen is when all the old tutors’
leaves for any reason and new tutors take control of the situation. The problem is that new tutors
can have difficult times to adapt to the job and create credibility in the classroom. My solution to
lacking experience and to implement the extending training is to give free tutor training to
students that are interested on being tutors in future semester.
I have seen how students constantly asked me how to be a tutor. A lot of students that are trying
to get a job will go to a short training of a couple hours to demonstrate their abilities as future
tutors. This will help them to be beneficial for the classroom and also could give an previous idea
of who could be a future employ. Therefore, centers can have future employees already prepare
to jump into the field of tutoring with an easier idea of tutoring.
If the funding is not giving to arrange this especial training, we could invite prospective students
that could represent good future tutors. In other word, students willing to volunteer in order to be
part of a future tutor in the center.
The process of implementing the extended training could take some time to be effective.
However the process of research make us use trial and error to see how effective or bad this plan

10. could be. As tutor, I think that many people would like to have future opportunities and it also
can increase their self-esteem in the long term.
6-Conclusions and Personal Comments
Tutoring is an amazing process of helping other students to become independent learners. We
want students to be able to be successful without our help. This could be really challenging some
times. Therefore, I think that if we start the process of tutoring from the students we can create
independent students out of the students themselves. I have seen how many students take
important roles on the classroom.
The best way to increase the assistance on the SI is by making student feel comfortable, so if
tutors identify attention seeking student, they could be the first place of helping the other

11. students. The Inattentive students always will be part of the classroom, but we can use phycology
to influence them to change to an attention seeking student.
We might have many problems with the disrespectful students. However, tutors can have the
power of changing the students to better individuals. All these proposals on extended training, as
mention in part 3, can help the society to create better individuals. Individuals that can provide
benefit to the community by being better human beings.
Tutoring is highly related to life, so if we implement method to transfer knowledge how to help
other students, we can eventually be able to change our tutors to mentors and our students to
tutors and prepare more professionally our staff members. The increasing level of tutoring in our
tutors, students, teacher, and any individual in the classroom can lead us to a better world where
a complete campus could be helpful to the others. These sounds like a impossible dream, but we
are the only one that can make it possible.
8-Cited Page
Hicks, Deborah. Discourse, Learning, and Schooling. First Edition 1996. Cambridge, New
York: Cambridge University Press. 2008.
Maxwell, Martha. Does Tutoring Help? A Look at the Literature. Volume 7, Issue 4. US
Department of Education. Appalachian State University.
McKeachie, Wilbert J. Marilla Svinicki. 2014. McKeachie’s Teaching Tips: Strategies,
Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers, 14th ed. Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.