Planning

Critical Questions

• What academic content will tutoring sessions focus on? 
• How should tutoring sessions be structured and facilitated to affirm students’ academic and personal identities, build strong relationships, and ensure students master the content?

Sub Elements

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Critical Question

• What data will the program collect to measure impact?
• How will these data reflect a holistic understanding of students’ experiences?
• What processes will be in place to review and act upon collected data?
• How will these review processes promote equity and reduce bias?

Sub Elements

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Program Design Decisions: Model Dimensions and Related Considerations

As you design a tutoring program, you will have numerous decisions to make that influence and impact one another. On the left column of the table below are Model Dimensions of tutoring programs; on the right are corresponding Considerations that allow you to contemplate how interactions among model design decisions may impact your tutoring program.

Program Design

Program Focus

With a clear program focus, value proposition, logic model, cost estimate and initial model dimension decisions, you can begin implementation. The toolkit provides implementation guidance and tools for each of the seven elements of high-impact tutoring. The Tool Appendix gives the full range of tools.

What is a Value Proposition?

A Value Proposition is a concise articulation of the value an organization delivers should someone choose to use their program. It consists of two core components: the Challenge (or unmet need) that the program intends to address and the Approach that states how the program provides value to address that challenge. It distinguishes the program from other seemingly similar programs by highlighting what makes its approach uniquely well-suited to solving a specific problem or particularly efficient at meeting a specific unmet need.

Critical Questions

• Why and for whom is this tutoring program needed?
• How will this tutoring program increase equity?

Implementation Checklist

• Understand the community strengths, resources and needs through a landscape analysis
• Articulate an equity-based value proposition about unmet student needs identified through the landscape analysis
• Develop a logic model defining inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes
• Understand program costs and fun

Whether you are designing a new program or seeking to improve an existing one, deeply understanding your program’s value proposition, logic model and the landscape in which your program operates will help to focus your efforts most beneficially. This analysis and resulting understanding will provide the foundation and context needed to design a cohesive, high-impact tutoring program.

Designing a program is best done iteratively. Here is a suggested process: