Tutor Training Manual.indd - Chandler-Gilbert Community College

12
Active Learning
Imagine a tutor is helping a student work a homework problem. What are the differences
between passive learning and active learning
Passive Learning:
Tutor: “Here, let me show you how to do that.”
Active Learning:
Tutor: “What section of the textbook discusses this”
Passive is when...
• Tutor lectures or explains without engaging the student with questions.
• Tutor answers the student’s questions rather than asking the student to call upon prior
knowledge and skill to try to figure them out, or to consult the lecture notes, textbook, or
other reference materials.
• Tutor solves homework problems rather than asking the student to solve them.
Active is when ...
• The student does something to participate in learning to seek mastery of the material.
• Activities are structured so that the student is required to do the work.
• The student is engaged in the process summarizing the content he or she has learned.
Active learning has the following affects:
• It makes tutoring more interesting and fun.
• It fosters appreciation of learning.
• It helps students practice self expression, critical thinking, and self initiated inquiry.
How to Stimulate Active Learning While Tutoring
The Prompt Response Method
A prompt is a statement or a question that requests a response. Generally, tutors prompt
with a question and students respond.
The following scenario is an example of the Prompt-Response Method:
Tutor (prompt): “How do I find the horizontal intercepts”
Student (response): “I plug zero in the y and solve for x.”
The tutor’s prompt is a leading question, a very common tutoring technique. This question
helped the tutor identify the information the student has already mastered. Tutor initiated
prompts should be questions designed to engage the student. See the ‘Asking the Right
Questions’ section of this manual for more information about effective questioning
techniques.
Another example of using the Prompt-Response Method:
Student (prompt): “I don’t get the difference between a domain and range.”
Tutor (response): “What do you know about domain and range”
The tutor did not answer the student’s question, but instead responded with another
prompt in the form of a question. Again the tutor offered a prompt to help clarify for both
of them the student’s level of knowledge.