YONSEI UNIVERSITY’S Innovative Center for Teaching and Learning (ICTL) has provided its eagle tutoring service to undergraduates since 2003. The program aims to help students deepen their understanding of specific course material and perform better in their classes. However, despite its long history, the service is still underutilized and relatively unknown to many Yonseians. If you are grappling with challenging courses, why don’t you sign up for eagle tutoring this semester?

What is Eagle Tutoring?

   Eagle tutoring is a peer learning program provided by the ICTL office. It matches undergraduates seeking academic help with their enrolled courses to student tutors who are available to teach a course. Eagle tutoring capitalizes on the proven effectiveness of peer learning by allowing students to learn from each other, evaluate their own learning, and ultimately acquire a better understanding of their course contents. Kim Gyu-eon (Sr., Dept. of History), who took part in the program both as a tutee and a tutor, found someone approachable to answer the myriad of questions he was reluctant to ask his microeconomics professor.

   Every semester, roughly 100 tutoring teams are created, and each team consists of 1 tutor working with 2-5 tutees throughout the semester. Every undergraduate can sign up to be tutored in up to two of their enrolled courses on the Open Smart Education (OSE) tutoring website* during course enrollment period. As for tutors, any student who has acquired a grade above an A- for a course is eligible to become a tutor for that course. On top of having multiple tutors available for some subjects, eagle tutoring is available for all courses offered at Yonsei even including elective classes such as Understanding Movies. However, in an interview with The Yonsei Annals, Lee Hye-won, a faculty member at ICTL, explained the difficulty of finding enough tutors to teach courses that involve complex mathematics, have high drop-out rates, and are hard to self-study for.

How does the system work?

   Tutors and tutees are encouraged to meet at least once a week to fulfill the program’s 15-hour minimum requirement. As the purpose of the system is to encourage student-directed learning, it is mostly up to the tutors’ discretion to determine how they would like to carry on with their lessons. This is where individual tutors’ preferences come into play as some tutors prefer a lecture format while others prefer simply answering as many questions as possible.

   Apart from the regular meetings, there are three mandatory events for all program participants. Orientation is where tutors and tutees first get to meet each other and are reminded of the upcoming schedule and provided details about a tutoring journal—a short reflection to be submitted after every lecture. Then, during the interim evaluation, each tutor gives a five-minute presentation on their lecturing method and receives feedback from other tutors. The final presentation is for tutees to describe their tutoring experience and suggest improvements to the program. Although these events are mainly meant to check on the progress of the teams, students will not receive credit for their work unless they participate in every event. Meanwhile, the ICTL office has recently switched the final presentation to an online video format in consideration of the difficulty in accommodating every participant’s schedule after the end of the semester.

   Before applying for eagle tutoring, there are a few things potential tutors and tutees should keep in mind. First, as a team may be disbanded due to schedule conflicts, students are encouraged to check their available time slots and mention them in their activity plan prior to orientation. There have reportedly been instances when tutors had to teach the same lecture twice after failing to accommodate for each of their tutees’ schedules. As for the tutoring location, every team may sign up for one of three rooms made available by the ICTL at Baekyang Hall from 07:00-22:00 through YSCEC. But even with this system in place, some teams will inevitably have to find some alternative whether it be renting a room at a study café or going to the school library. For its part, the ICTL office is searching for ways to reserve more spaces for students upon receiving feedback regarding the current system.

More than “just” a volunteer service

   Many tutors find their tutoring experience intellectually engaging, as they get to learn about their tutees’ way of thinking and comprehension of the course material. According to Kim Su-hyun (Sr., Dept. of Mathematics), he often received questions he had never thought of from his tutees and those questions opened up whole new perspectives on how to approach the problems he was teaching. Moreover, by answering tutees’ questions, he was able to identify the gaps in his own knowledge.

   Another reason that tutors find the program highly attractive is due to the improvements in their knowledge-communication skills. As the Roman philosopher Seneca once stated, “while we teach, we learn.” The best way to test your understanding of something is to check whether you can explain it out loud. Tutors who teach the same courses over and over were very satisfied to find themselves becoming veterans in their chosen subjects by the time they left the program.

   As for the tutees, the potential benefits of the program are apparent in the 96% average satisfaction rate of polled participants with 93.4% of students responding that they would be willing to participate again. According to Lee, she always receives comments like “I would have dropped out of the course without this program” and “I would have received a C+ without my tutor” during the final presentation. There are clearly no reasons not to receive free help as long as you know about this opportunity.

Room for improvement?

   That being said, every system has its flaws and eagle tutoring is no exception. The shortage of designated meeting spaces and ensuring the necessary number of tutors for high demand courses are problems that need to be addressed moving forward. Another is the issue of compensation. Even though the tutors acknowledge that this is a volunteer service, many tutors have pointed out that the current ₩200,000 scholarship does not adequately reflect the amount of work they put into the program. Tedious processes like attending mandatory events and writing a weekly tutoring journal have also been debated upon as being too burdensome and time-consuming for tutors, who are mostly still undergraduate students. Many tutors find them irrelevant to the quality of tutoring provided and due to their own busy schedules, tutors often struggle to balance their own studies with their tutoring obligations which causes some tutors to leave after only a single semester.

   Finally, there is the issue of the program’s obscurity. The general opinion amongst participants is that the ICTL office should come up with a better method to increase awareness of the program other than posting it on their SNS page or using a YSCEC announcement board. Gyu-eon added that using Everytime app**’s information board or posting an announcement where everyone could easily access could be helpful.

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   Those who were once tutees now find themselves working as tutors, sharing their experiences and helping others who are struggling the way they used to. In Yonsei, as long as you have a strong motivation to study, you can always reach out for help, especially through eagle tutoring program.

* https://tutoring.yonsei.ac.kr/sinchon/index.php

**Everytime is an online social platform for university students.