Does tutors' use of their knowledge of their students enhance one-to-one tutoring?

One-to-one human-human tutoring is one of the most effective learning contexts (Bloom, 1984; Cohen, Kulik & Kulik, 1982). It is commonly assumed tutoring is so effective in part because tutors adapt their tutoring to their students. For this to occur, tutors must develop accurate assessments of their students that guide their tutoring actions. In this study, this tutor adapting assumption was tested by determining whether there are any relationships between tutors' assessments of their students and their tutoring actions. To determine the overall effect of prior experience on tutoring outcome measures, tutoring efficiency, student learning, and motivational gains were compared when tutors either had or did not have prior experience with their students. It was predicted that prior experience would lead to improved outcome measures. The effect of prior experience was assessed both in face-to-face (FTF) and synchronous computer-mediated (CM) tutoring contexts. In the FTF tutoring context, tutors developed accurate assessments of their students' knowledge of the content that was relevant in the tutoring question discussed. Though there was no overall benefit of prior experience on tutoring efficiency, there was evidence that the beginning portion of the tutoring segment was more efficient when tutors and students shared prior experience, suggesting that tutors and students did not need to spend much time together for tutoring to benefit from prior experience. There was also evidence that prior experience had a positive effect on overall student learning in the FTF context. However, there was no evidence that adaptive tutor actions were responsible for these outcome differences. In the CM tutoring context, tutors developed accurate assessments of their students' general competence and confidence, but they did not develop accurate assessments of their students' relevant content knowledge. Analogous to the FTF result, though there was no overall benefit of prior experience on tutoring efficiency, there was evidence that tutoring efficiency was enhanced across the beginning portion of the tutoring segment. Though there was no evidence that prior experience had a positive effect on overall student learning in the CM context, there was evidence that learning content from the beginning portion of the tutoring segment was improved with prior experience. Tutors demonstrated adaptive behavior by elaborating more on a concept when students did not know it. Additionally, there were fewer misunderstandings that occurred during the beginning of the tutoring dialog when tutors had prior experience with their students. Thus, in the CM context, there was some evidence that tutors' adaptive actions were responsible for increased efficiency and learning during the beginning of the tutoring segment. Thus, in both a FTF and CM context, prior experience with their student did cause tutors to develop more accurate assessments of some aspects of their students, and this prior experience was associated with some larger learning and efficiency gains, as hypothesized (but not with motivation gains). However, analyses of the tutoring dialogs revealed no anticipated adaptation of tutors to students in the FTF context, but some anticipated adaptation in the CM context.