Learning Tools

Peer Tutoring Service Expands into Four More Colleges

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 02/01/21

Knack, an education technology company that provides a program for managing peer tutoring, has recruited four more institutions as customers. Saint Mary's University of Minnesota, Illinois Institute of Technology, Florida Memorial University and Morris Brown College have all joined other schools to provide free course-specific, peer-to-peer tutoring for their students.

Students can use the service to get free help from peer tutors on their own campuses — online or face-to-face — or access help after hours with Knack's own network of tutors. They can also use the program to line up weekly help with their courses and can sign on to serve as paid tutors as well. Institutions can set up a schedule of tutoring sessions through Knack and post it to their school websites.

The tutoring platform, which can be used one-on-one or in group sessions, provides a virtual classroom, chat and whiteboard functionality. Afterwards, the program solicits session ratings and tutor feedback.

According to the company, the program also provides usage data that can be combined with student outcome data to "show the impact" of tutoring initiatives.

"When institutions partner with Knack, they unlock powerful learning data, drastically increase student engagement and development, lift retention and graduation rates and drive the acquisition of career-ready skills," said Samyr Qureshi, co-founder at Knack, in a press release.