Editors Note: The Texas State Writing Center does offer drop-in services. However, students who drop in aren’t guaranteed an appointment since previously scheduled appointments have priority.
Texas State offers a variety of tutoring centers on campus for courses such as languages, math and writing. Although tutoring is an invaluable resource, it is not always readily accessible to students. If a student is unable to access a resource, then the resource has failed the student.
Ryan Trevino, an urban and regional planning freshman, often finds himself in the Student Learning Assistance Center (SLAC). Despite the benefits of SLAC, he said the hours are not always convenient for students.
“What really kind of stunk is they didn’t have any kind of tutoring on the weekends,” Trevino said. “Not having accessibility to someone that knows more than me on the weekend definitely hurt because I have these questions I don’t understand.”
With finals on the horizon at the end of every semester, having accessible peer tutors is extremely important. At all points in the semester, projects, essays and tests can make or break a student’s grade, yet our university is unable to provide the necessary tutoring.
Many tutoring centers on campus are open around the time of business hours, although some stay open later into the early evening. Unfortunately, regular business hours do not work for everyone. Many students have jobs that conflict with the tutoring schedules.
Tutoring centers are a great asset for students and they must be made more accessible through on-demand and walk-in tutoring. According to facultyfocus.com, peer tutoring “enhances students’ engagement, communication and independence skills [and] promotes critical thinking and problem-solving based learning.”
According to SLAC’s schedule, multiple subjects, including classes like physics 1310 and sociology 3307, do not have consistent tutoring coverage for periods when SLAC is open. Additionally, at maximum, there are four tutors per location for one subject. With a school as large as Texas State, SLAC is not able to cater to many students when they have only four tutors.
Along with this, there are some course subjects that only have one tutor. Having a single tutor for a course is extremely inconvenient for both the students in the class and the workload of the tutor.
If a student were unable to receive help at a tutoring center because a tutor for their subject was not present or already preoccupied, it would likely dissuade that student from trying to attend an assistance session again, due to an unhelpful experience.
SLAC is not the only tutoring center on campus that has challenges with serving the students. The Writing Center is another example of why tutoring areas on campus need to be better catered to the schedules of students.
According to the Writing Center’s website, students are required to schedule an appointment and drop-ins are not accepted. This business model does not work best for most students.
The unfortunate reality of scheduling appointments for tutoring is students are not always able to plan that far ahead, depending on when they receive an assignment versus when it is due. Having on-demand tutors at the Writing Center could help diversify the assistance provided.
On its scheduling website, the Writing Center has the option to select a 25-minute session. The issue with this is that if a student schedules a 25, or more, minute appointment, but only uses 10 out of the 25 minutes, then that extra 15 minutes that could have been used to help another student is wasted. It is devastating for a student to be turned away from receiving the help they need.
Overall, Texas State needs more on-demand tutoring centers that are accessible to the schedules of the working student, the non-traditional student and the involved student. Campus resources should meet the needs of the students, not the students having to meet the wants of the resources.
