College of Engineering Peer Tutoring Program

Tutors are not course instructors, course learning assistants (LAs), or course teaching assistants (TAs). Tutors are not responsible for teaching course material.

Tutors can help clarify course content and assist you in your learning process. Tutors can work with you to help you better understand ideas or concepts. A tutor can help you gain new perspectives by asking questions, explaining concepts in different ways, providing examples, sequentially bridging prior knowledge to your current coursework, and providing encouragement.

While tutors can help you understand the concepts needed to complete your assignments, they cannot help you complete the work itself or provide you answers (meaning, tutors will not do the work for you). They cannot provide feedback about grades, guarantee success in a class, or assist with take-home exams.

Going to a tutoring session is not a substitute for attending class. Tutoring helps students improve subject comprehension, develop their learning skills, and receive additional support in the subject matter. Tutoring is just a piece of a larger puzzle of learning support resources; we encourage students to use course-based support offered by your instructors and TAs, and to consider tutoring an additional supplemental resource in your learning.

The COE Peer Tutoring Team is made up of current engineering students (both undergraduate and graduate students) who have successfully completed the courses they support, and who feel comfortable and confident in their knowledge of that material.

The College of Engineering Peer Tutoring services are available to all current OSU students (Corvallis, Cascades, and Ecampus).

Peer tutoring is provided free-of-charge for all OSU students.

This may seem obvious, but first, make sure you are attending class, paying attention, and staying engaged with the class. Engagement looks like: listening attentively, taking notes, asking questions to your instructor when you are not understanding course content or feel like you need clarity on concepts/ideas.

To get the most from tutoring sessions, you should attempt your assignments or practice problems before coming in. This will help you best communicate the ideas, concepts, or problems you need support with. It is always most helpful if you are able to ask a tutor a specific question. In short, the more effort you put towards your learning on your own, usually the better your tutoring session will go! 

You should bring questions! Also, additionally, course materials (textbooks, handouts, syllabus, etc.), notes, and any/all attempted work with your assignments/practice questions.

For an in-person tutoring session, you can also bring a charged laptop, paper, a pen or pencil. 

For a Zoom tutoring session, please join the session through your laptop or tablet rather than a phone. Be prepared to screen-share your class’s Canvas site, textbook, your notes, and any other study material you have. 

We offer course-based tutoring (Peer Tutoring Program) and general technical programming/coding support (Programming Help Desk). On these pages you can see updated calendars of available sessions. 

The majority of our tutoring sessions are drop-in sessions. These are not appointment-based, which means you can locate a tutoring shift on the appropriate calendar and simply show up during that time. The calendar entries will provide the following information: a list of courses that the tutor supports, the tutor’s name, and the location of that tutoring session (if it is a virtual session, the location will be a Zoom link). Find tutoring shifts that list the course for which you are seeking support. Drop-in to any of these. You do not need to return to the same tutor/same shift if you use our services throughout the term. We just hope there are shifts that work well for your schedule!

We have a limited number of appointment-based, one-on-one, tutoring sessions available. You can see the tutors available, the courses they support, and their individual availability for scheduling a session at the Calendly COE Peer Tutor team page. For ease of availability and scheduling, these sessions are Zoom-based. When you schedule an appointment, you will receive a generated Zoom link to use. A few things to know: these appointments must be booked at least 12 hours in advance, you cannot book more than 14 days in advance, and each appointment is 30min (but feel free to book back-to-back appointments if you’d like to have an hour with the tutor).

Availability of tutoring support for certain courses will vary from term to term depending on the tutors on the team. Tutoring calendars on this page will list courses supported by the tutor on duty during each shift.

Our tutors will greet you and ask you to share what you’d like to work on during your session.
Tutors will likely ask you open-ended questions and encourage your participation. They will likely have you talk through what you know. You might explore ways to answer your questions together, using your class resources or additional resources. You might work through practice problems together, review old tests and quizzes, or talk through study strategies for the class. Actively participate in the session by taking notes to refer to later, ask clarifying questions, and demonstrate knowledge of the content covered in the session.

You may be the only person seeking tutoring at the time, or you might show up to a tutor helping several students or groups of students from different classes at the same time. Be prepared to wait, especially during peak hours, as there may be several students ahead of you. Our tutors will do our best to touch base with you during a busy session to let you know how much time they might have to assist you.

You can use COE’s drop-in tutoring services as often as would be helpful to you.

The majority of in-person tutoring sessions are held in various rooms in Johnson Hall. We might also be located a few hours a week in satellite locations on campus. Locations will be listed on the online calendars for each shift.

Online tutoring takes place over Zoom. You will find the appropriate Zoom link listed as the location for virtual shifts.

Tutoring is either in-person or via Zoom (we do not offer shifts in a hybrid format). Pay attention to the listed locations on the online Peer Tutoring and Programming Help Desk calendars.

We wrap up our hiring of new Peer Tutors before the start of each term. Our job posting is listed as long as we have a hiring need, under Student Employment Opportunities, on the OSU HR Jobs Page. If you’d like to be considered for a position on our team, please feel free to apply when you see the job posted.

The OSU Academic Success Center (ASC) has an excellent page devoted to tutoring resources across campus. While visiting their page, you may also want to check out the resources they provide to all students on campus regardless of their disciplines. They are a fantastic campus partner in support of your success!