Tutoring is among the most impactful educational influences on student achievement, with perhaps the greatest promise of combating student learning loss. Due to its high impact, organizations are rapidly developing tutoring programs and discovering a common problem- a shortage of qualified, experienced tutors. This mixed methods investigation focuses on the impact of short (∼15 min.), online lessons in which tutors participate in situational judgment tests based on everyday tutoring scenarios. We developed three lessons on strategies for supporting student self-efficacy and motivation and tested them with 80 tutors from a national, online tutoring organization. Using a mixed-effects logistic regression model, we found a statistically significant learning effect indicating tutors performed about 20% higher post-instruction than pre-instruction (β = 0.811, p < 0.01). Tutors scored ∼30% better on selected compared to constructed responses at posttest with evidence that tutors are learning from selected-response questions alone. Learning analytics and qualitative feedback suggest future design modifications for larger scale deployment, such as creating more authentically challenging selected-response options, capturing common misconceptions using learnersourced data, and varying modalities of scenario delivery with the aim of maintaining learning gains while reducing time and effort for tutor participants and trainers.

In this demonstration, we showcase the recent advancement of scenario-based tutor training with a focus to scale by applying the learn-by-doing approach to teaching strategies to provide socio-motivational support. These short (~15 min.) self-paced lessons use the predict-observe-explain inquiry method to develop mentor capacity in bolstering student motivation (i.e., fostering growth mindset). These custom training modules are being created to provide supplemental mentor support within the Personalized Learning2 system, an app which combines human tutoring and student math software to improve mentoring efficiency by connecting mentors to personalized resources, such as scenario-based mentor lessons, based on individual needs. Enhancing mentor training will aid in better quality mentoring at low cost. Mentor training is most effective when scenario-based practice provides trainees with response-specific feedback. To achieve feedback at scale, we illustrate an iterative design effort toward creating selected-response tasks that maintain some of the authenticity benefits of constructed-response. These scenario-based mentor lessons will be used by national level mentoring organizations as part of our efforts to scale.