Down Time

         Keeping students engaged is one of the main challenges you face as academic mentors. For one-on-one academic mentors, it can be hard to monitor student engagement while explaining complicated concepts to your students. For Paired or group academic mentoring, keeping two students engaged who work at different paces can be a large challenge. The following excerpt from the book A training Guide for College Tutors and Peer Educators addresses this issue.

    “Down time is a chunk of time in a session during which a student neither working nor thinking and, therefore, can be totally passive. Because students complete work at differing paces, downtime is most prevalent in group sessions. In one-on-one tutorial sessions, down time most often occurs when the tutor talks more than necessary, which causes the student to tune out and lose attention. Needless to say, students should experience as little down time as possible in your sessions.

To reduce down time, give students explicit time limits for an activity, which helps students judge how to pace their work. Also, you need not wait for all students to complete an activity before moving on to another whole-group activity. When the first group completes an activity, begin to review content and check answers as a whole group. Then, call on members of the first group to answer the questions or help solve the problems that others have not begun. Or divide up the questions so that groups are tackling fewer questions or problems.

Eliminating down time requires advanced planning. Be prepared to direct the students who finish first to the next step or another activity. As examples, students who finish early can:

• Help other students who are still working.
• Complete an additional activity or set of problems.
• Do a backup activity, such as an extra worksheet, lab sheet, or end of chapter questions.
• Add to an ongoing bank of potential test questions, which can be used for the pre-exam review session.
• Write answers, steps, or reasons on the board.
• Exchange, critique or check each other’s work.
• Begin homework or work on other requirements for the course.
• Review and highlight class notes, outline a text chapter, make study cards, or apply other recommended study strategies for the course.”