As a tutor it is frequently difficult for us to access ways to help our students see material from class in many different ways. If we had access to class notes for each class taught here we could create digital copies, visual examples and verbal recordings. Often times professors expect their students to adapt to their teaching, and with many students it is much more likely that they will fail rather than adapt. Helping to offer this kind of data would be wonderful.
I feel that at the moment professors are very reserved in the amount of re-teaching that they want tutors to complete. It isn't our job to teach, but oftentimes it would help tutees if we knew what had been covered in each class so that we could transfer the material to a different format for various learners. At the moment our best bet is to encourage our tutees to open up about WHAT they want help with so that we can solely present that information to them.
In the short-term I do believe that we can help tutees to learn what style of learner that they are. This could help them to better know how to gain information from their courses. It would help if we could steer them toward taking notes or recording lectures on a tape-recorder, depending on what learning style they best benefit from.
In the long-term I feel that tutors could help instructors to see how much our pictures, explanations and examples help their students to retain information; this in turn would help them to be more willing to share their materials with us. If there was total cooperation between all parties (instructors talking with tutors about tutees and specific classroom expectations/requirements) I feel that our MCC students would be exponentially more successful despite any hold backs that they may have encountered to that point.
Because of what I have learned, I will be more likely to recognize learning styles and will try to present information in various ways to tutees. I feel that too often we get stuck in a rut, or think that all people learn as we do, and we forget to observe others' learning habits. I will try to recognize learning styles within my tutees and encourage them to recognize the same.
I think it would also be a good idea to pass on the learning style tests to the professors so they can implement it in their classrooms to recognize all learning styles with their ways of teaching.
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