Students often enter The Sandbox looking for help on a particular assignment. It wasn’t until Finals Week that I noticed students coming in for general questions and study help; and even then, the number of students was sparse. This presents a particular puzzlement for our talented staff of tutors: there is a thin line between helping a student finish an assignment and allowing the student to understand the concept that is required to finish the assignment.
My personal experience tutoring Java comes to mind. All of our Java tutors have completed CS 180 or an equivalent in some reasonable fashion and have programmed with Java in the past. Therefore, their knowledge of Java is quite respectable. When a student comes in and asks why their program is not working, they are essentially asking us to debug it for them, or, occasionally, to figure out the entire logic of the assignment. Of course, it is not as cut and dry as, “Hey, can you finish my assignment for me?” Yet, this should not be considered an attempt to belittle the amount of effort that students exert on their work. In fact, I don’t believe that students who are astute enough to visit The Sandbox would be the ones who are conniving enough to trick a tutor into doing their homework for them. Therefore, it is the job of the tutors themselves to find the balance between tutoring and helping the student with an assignment.
Recently, I began bringing chocolate to The Sandbox to give to students as rewards for doing well. Psychology aside, the idea was more than simply a ploy to increase the amount of returning students. As usual, the lab was packed the night before a CS 180 assignment was due. Furthermore, I was the only tutor on duty. So, I decided to try something different. I asked the group of students a question, at least partially related to the assignment at hand: what is an “invoking object?” The goal was to teach them not only the terminology used in Java but also how methods are called and how variables are used. The student who correctly responded got a piece of chocolate; and sure enough, a few weeks later, the same student was able to correctly recall this information while working on a new assignment.
Did my method of tutoring really help the students? Perhaps. Was that exact question on their final exam? I have no idea. Did it help them get a better grade? I hope so; but I also don’t think that should be the goal of school. The goal should be to learn, and learn they did, whether or not they knew it. Helping someone on an assignment simply entails leading them toward the right answer. Tutoring entails allowing the student to lead themselves toward the right answer and then being able to continuously use those skills in the future.
As I mentioned before, the line between those two actions is thin, microscopic even. And sometimes, the student is not even eager or willing to learn. Still, there is an even bigger problem. Let me illustrate with the following example: imagine that you are showing your parents how to log into MyBentley and, for their benefit, you allow them to lead (i.e. control the mouse and keyboard). You say, “Okay, now click the Log In button.” You instinctively know where it is after having clicked it so many times. And yet, the mouse does not move. After a few seconds of awkward silence, your parent says, “I don’t see it. Where is it?” The tutor who is simply helping the student with an assignment would grab the mouse and click the button for their parent. The tutor who is tutoring would explain to them where the button is. In both cases, the button eventually gets clicked; and the parent witnesses it happen each time. Yet, allowing them to move the mouse and click it themselves is much more beneficial. Next time they visit MyBentley, they will (hopefully) instinctively know where that button is.
The problem, as you may have noticed, is that the answer is incredibly obvious to the tutor but not the student. It may take longer, but the tutor must – absolutely must – let the student figure it out on their own. A tutor should simply be a guide that facilitates the student’s forward progress but does not simply push them forward (almost like a well-constructed PowerPoint presentation).
Therein rests the problem with school. Teachers simply feed students information and expect them to learn on their own. Obviously, it would be impossible for professors to give each student the individual time necessary to allow them to learn properly. While it is easy to game the school system and receive good grades without truly learning, the best students are the ones who actually put forth effort to learn what they were “taught.” It is my firm belief that these students are the ones who live more fulfilling lives after they finish school because they are more willing to ask questions and to absorb and comprehend their environment.
But I digress.
Getting back to the point, it is my sincere hope that every student with whom I work will come back to The Sandbox. However, upon returning, they will not ask for help on their next assignment. Rather, they will be interested in experimenting and learning on their own. Their questions will, hopefully, build off of what they learned when they last visited. Hopefully, they will be able to evolve what they learned into self-exploration and self-actualization.
Quickly, allow me to touch upon my point of giving out chocolate while working with students. I learned in Psychology that reward is a better form of motivation than punishment. In other words, it is more beneficial to give a student positive feedback (e.g. chocolate) then punishment (e.g. a reprimand). Rewarding the student will encourage them to contribute more in discussions and explore topics more thoroughly.
Lastly, the example of Java was used mainly because that is the discipline that I tutor the most. It is the specific (i.e. non-IT 101 class) subject in which I have the most experience. And it is extremely useful for more than the surface reasons of learning how to code. Rather, learning Java, or any other object-oriented programming language, allows one to think through a process from start to finish. It teaches logic, through and through; and logic is, in my opinion, one of the most important factors that is often missing in the business world (yes, I am talking about those times when you stick your head in your palm and sigh after one of your co-workers says something unbelievably…erm, illogical). Logic helps with any and every discipline (except philosophy, where the goal is to explain matters in as an illogical matter as possible simply for the heck of it). Logic, however, is something that cannot be simply explained. Logic has to be learned, largely from years upon years of experience.
Logic is the reason why someone could flip a coin ten times, get ten heads, and still understand that there is not a greater likelihood of more tails in the next ten flips – or, simply put, the lack of logic is the reason casinos are still in business. Logic is at the basis of universal truth (i.e. math).
I apologize for the rant, but I hope this will shed a light on how The Sandbox operates – or how it is supposed to operate. Simply put, if you come in looking for help on your next assignment, you will get help on your next assignment. If you come in looking to learn…well, come in and see what happens. You could learn a thing or two.
