Mission College – Case Study
About Mission College
Mission College is a public community college located in the heart of the Silicon Valley. At Mission College, students have the opportunity to select their courses from many programs and receive services from various campus resources to ensure their success and support. The highly diverse and active student population at Mission College makes the environment energetic and vibrant.
Tutoring Services at Mission College
The Academic Support Center provides academic skills courses and tutoring services for the entire college. Tutoring is available for more than 20 subject areas and 60 plus courses, including Accounting, Business, English writing, ESL, and most STEM courses. We have one-on-one tutoring by appointment, drop-in tutoring, and group tutoring. We serve more than 800 students and about 12,000 student contact hours per semester. The Tutoring Center started using AccuTrack in 2000, and then a few years later began providing online tutoring appointment scheduling for students via Weblink, now AccuSL,. Last winter, we upgraded to the latest version of AccuTrack V.12 and AccuSL.
Reports
Based on my personal experience, there are several useful reports that we use for budgeting and providing tutoring service information. Two of the frequently useful reports are:
Visit Reports
These reports show the usage of the tutoring services, an analysis on traffic, student visit patterns, and popularity of subjects/courses. By configuring the filters, we can collect use of service information on a monthly, weekly, daily, or hourly basis (e.g. 10am-12pm or 2-4pm). We can also generate student visit records based on tutoring subject(s). These tools aid me making recruitment and budget utilization decisions.
Activity Assignments
This report shows each course we offer tutoring for with a list of the corresponding tutors who provide the service. We print this report out and post it in the center so students can identify which tutor(s) can help with his/her course.
WebLink/AccuSL
Online appointment scheduling is very popular with students. To assist students in learning how to make appointment online, we created a step-by-step handout that explains the procedures for scheduling an appointment online to students. Students receive the handout when they first create their scheduling account at the center. An in-person demonstration is available for students as well. Besides the handout and personal demonstration, we also developed a slide show for them. Students can access this tutorial slideshow on the Academic Support Center/Tutoring Center website.
Conclusion
Not only does AccuTrack assist us with lab operations and management, its reports help us understand student usage of tutoring service and analysis student traffic, which supports us in more accurate budgeting, hiring, and scheduling of subject hours in subsequent semesters.
In addition to these “operational and managerial” uses and benefits, AccuTrack, though AccuSL, offers an additional benefit to students. For various reasons, many students have not had as much experience with technology as would be ideal for these times when everything is going digital and online. Their use of AccuSL provides them with an opportunity to use technology for appointment scheduling. Using technology is a skill useful for students to be comfortable with; so the Tutoring Center is not only helping student course work, but through other programs and AccuTrack we are enhancing students’ skills in non-course skill areas.
Chia Green, Faculty
Tutorial Services Academic Support Center (ASC)
Mission College
Santa Clara, CA