All LARC Peer Educator Roles & Responsibilities
A Handful of Your Many Roles as a Peer Educator
- A Listener. We listen to students' input carefully, attending to body language as well as speech.
- A Questioner. We question student assumptions and turn students' questions back to them. We break down big questions into smaller, more answerable questions.
- A Feedback Provider. We provide feedback on students' work.
- An Explainer. We explain skills and strategies in terms students can understand.
- A Model. We model effective learning strategies and thereby help students learn how to solve their problems.
- An Encourager and Confidence-Builder. We praise student strengths and show confidence in the student's ability to learn.
- A Motivator. We help students develop goals and break down large tasks, so they do not seem so daunting.
- A Referrer. When the student's needs are beyond our skills, we refer the student to others who might be of help.
- A Team Player. We cooperate with our peers/LARC staff to provide the best possible help to students. This includes helping other staff to do their best.
- A Co-Learner. We learn from students, other staff, and LARC resources.
- A Thinker. We reflect on experiences with students and our training to continue to develop our skills.
- A Navigator. All of you have successfully navigated the university and know its terrain.
LARC Peer Educator Do’s and Don’ts
- Confidentiality: We never discuss our students with anyone except for other LARC staff. Any discussion of a student with other staff is strictly professional. We'll talk more about confidentiality during training.
- We always assist every student to the best of our ability. We need to pace ourselves so that we have enough energy to give each student their full appointment or session time and to do our best at each of those sessions.
- We help students do their work, but we don't do students' work for them. By ensuring that they do their work, we do not put ourselves, the student, or the LARC at risk of charges of cheating or plagiarism.
- We make every effort to help students become independent learners. We do not want to foster dependence in our students.
- We do our best to model learning strategies. If we do not know the answer to a student's question, we admit it and model ways to find the answer.
- We treat students as the mature, capable adults they are.
- We never criticize a student's instructor.
- We never predict grades for a student. Predicting grades puts our credibility at risk because we have no way to know the grading criteria used by an instructor.
- We continually seek to improve our academic support skills by 1) reflecting on our own tutoring/SI experiences; 2) using available time to increase our familiarity with LARC & campus resources; 3) attending training and staff meetings; 4) observing/being observed by our Advisors, and/or LARC staff.
Differences Between Tutors (Tutorial Program & Writing Center) and Supplemental Instruction Leaders
All LARC staff are hired, trained and supervised by the Learning & Academic Resource Center. All receive initial and ongoing training. LARC student staff do not grade or proctor exams, or act as the instructor.
| Supplemental Instruction Leaders | Tutors (including Embedded Tutors) |
| Primarily supports students in a specific course/course section. | May support students in a wider range of courses/course sections/subjects. |
| Attends class like a student and takes notes. | Does not attend class (unless they are a part of the embedded tutor pilot program). |
| Focuses on collaborative learning by facilitating group study sessions. Does not re-teach course content. | Focuses on learning for the individual student’s learning preferences/style. |
| Works directly with the faculty to identify areas where students may struggle or need extra support | Does not work directly with faculty (unless they are a part of the embedded tutor pilot program). |
| Will prepare ahead of time for sessions by creating session plans. | Will not generally prepare materials or tutoring session plans ahead of time. Follows lead of student in session. |
Training Expectations for ALL LARC Peer Educators
- Attend the entirety of the LARC Staff training. All programs will meet together for a segment of the training, and there will be separate program training as well.
- Communicate with the LARC Admin staff and your assigned Advisor regularly
- SI Leaders and Embedded Tutors should also be communicating with their faculty on a regular basis
- Attend staff meetings weekly (fall) or biweekly (spring). If you miss a meeting for any reason, follow up with your Advisor or Supervisor
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