2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Background
Many universities offer free tutoring services on campus for students to access when seeking additional help in their courses. The tutors are typically upper-division students who previously did well in the courses they can provide help in. Unfortunately, on campus tutors are often underutilized by engineering students, limiting the impact tutors can have on retention and building community.
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to work with engineering tutors at a small, private university to identify tutoring and course related strategies to improve tutor effectiveness and increase student utilization of tutors.
Methods
We conducted an exploratory focus group with four engineering tutors to elicit their perspectives on effective tutoring and identify perceived barriers to student utilization of tutors.
Results
In the exploratory focus group, the tutors expressed ways that they could become more involved with the courses they tutor and better prepared to help students seeking tutoring. The tutors emphasized greater course integration as a key factor in their effectiveness by suggesting access to the course learning management system (LMS), homework assignments and solutions, and opportunities to be in the classroom as learning assistants during active learning sessions.
Conclusion
Engineering faculty at the university studied have begun implementing some or all these strategies in their Fall 2025 courses. Additional focus groups will be conducted with tutors and faculty to assess the effectiveness of these strategies and what modifications or additional approaches might be needed. We believe the findings and lessons learned from this work are not unique to the university studied and could be beneficial for new and established faculty and departments looking for ways to provide their students with more effective tutoring support.