EPFL invest in tutoring
EPFL will invest no less than CHF 800,000 in 2011 in tutoring, a teaching aid that has already been proven with first-year bachelor students. The goal of this support is to help students to both integrate on the campus and succeed in their first year studies.
Divided into small groups of eight, and led by a tutor who will follow them during the whole term, the students perform mammoth teaching exercises such as analysis and physics. Previously, there could be 30 to 50 students in the same classroom, with only a few assistants to help them with the exercises. This meant that anyone who was having difficulty would sometimes have to wait a long time before being able to put his or her questions. “The outcome of the evaluations we performed shows that the students are very satisfied with the format of this tutoring”, explains Nadine Stainier of CRAFT. In 2010, 11 teaching programs used this approach, and no fewer than 1250 students benefited from the support of the pool of 220 tutors. The medium-term objective of CRAFT will be to allow each student to follow at least one course of analysis or physics in this format, whatever section he or she is in.
The Vice-Presidency for Academic Affairs at EPFL, responsible for training, has decided to support the concept of tutoring, and to double the budget in 2011. This is because it sees the potential of offering first-year students a high-quality learning framework that also emphasizes the human and relational aspects. The students thus acquire the necessary methodology to manage to complete the exercises in analysis and physics, while at the same time successfully integrating within the campus, where they will need to find their feet and develop new relationships. They will also benefit from the group dynamics: “We’ve even noticed that some groups have continued to work together outside the tutoring program, in disciplines other than analysis and physics”, points out Jean-Louis Ricci, also of CRAFT.
Participation in the exercise sessions remains high throughout the term, and the students appreciate the possibility of sharing and pooling problems to be solved. This enables them to better understand the problems and assimilate them. “If you have understood a problem and then you explain it to others, you understand it even better!” remarks one of them. Both the more advanced student, and the one who doesn’t feel so comfortable, thus find their feet. There is no doubt that tutoring is an important element in the range of support options put in place to help the first-year bachelors to integrate and learn their new “profession” – students at EPFL.