We've made it to step 3 of the learning center funnel: re-engagement. A student has heard of your center (awareness) and tried a session (activation). Now comes the question: Are they excited to come back for more? This final step is where your center becomes an integral part of the student's academic journey, and is also where word-of-mouth growth comes from.

In this article, we'll cover the key drivers of re-engagement:

1. Tutor quality and training
2. Session structure
3. Creating a welcoming environment
4. Email reminders

Improving Tutor Quality

The biggest driver to creating happy students who come back for more is the quality of the tutors themselves. Here are four key components to tutor quality:

1. Your Hiring Process

We've written an entire article diving into this in detail, but below are the highlights:

Generating Tutor Applicants

• Faculty Referrals - Perhaps the most popular hiring channel. Faculty often love referring students they're impressed by. Don't hesitate to reach out to faculty out of the blue to kick these relationships off.
• Direct Outreach to Student Lists - Pull a list of students who earned A or B grades in the courses you need tutors for and reach out directly. Your Office of Institutional Research can usually help with this.
• Student Job Boards - This was very effective for Penji when we used to be a private tutoring company. Keep the posting up to date, and ask the job board to bump it to the top of the list every term.
• Classroom Visits - You already may be doing presentations in classes to market your services to students. Some of the students listening may be great tutors for your center, too. Share a bit about the opportunity.
• Your Current Users - The best tutor of all may be someone who utilized your program heavily, made great progress, and wants to give back. These hires help accelerate your culture and campus reputation.

Interview Process

A great selection process often includes soft skill assessments, subject knowledge assessments, and mock tutoring sessions.

Common Interview Questions

• "Why do you want to be a tutor?" - The answer to this question says a lot about a candidate. If they tell you they just need a job, that's probably not a great sign.
• Ask about their teaching experience, even informal peer teaching.
• Propose scenarios: "What if a student was totally panicked about an exam and legitimately didn't have time to adequately prepare? How would you help them?"
• Assess adaptability: "What's your approach to getting acquainted with students and their unique needs?"
• Inquire about their approach to receiving feedback. Are they appropriately humble and hungry to learn how to teach?

Mock Tutoring Sessions

‍This is an especially important step in the hiring process. Ask the candidate to teach you something! Prepare sample questions related to their subject matter, pretend to be stumped, and see how they respond. They should demonstrate good question asking, empathy, patience, active listening, and ideally an enjoyment of teaching.

Setting the Right Tone‍

A rigorous interview process sets an expectation that this is a serious job and establishes a strong culture amongst your team. Keep it polished, follow up on time, and follow your process whatever it is.

2. Ongoing Development

Once you've hired great tutors, you need systems to help them grow:

Lead Tutor Program

Many larger centers deploy a hierarchical model where senior tutors help with program management and training. One effective approach is having lead tutors run rotating monthly workshops, each specializing in a specific topic like active learning or cultural awareness.

Session Observation and Peer Observations

Create a structure for tutors to observe and learn from each other. A few tips to keep this as simple and scalable as possible:

• Tell tutors this is a requirement, and have them find a tutor to pair up with for this joint observation.
• Prepare a standard form that tutors can use when observing the session. Here is a template. This should include space for feedback for the other tutor as well as space for personal reflection.
• Consider feedback formats that are always balanced between “strengths” and “opportunities”. Here is Penji’s performance review template. The benefit here is that the recipient knows what is coming every time: an equal mix of positive and negative. It’s not about judgement, but about providing structured feedback that guides their continued growth.
• If it fits your budget, give a $10 Starbucks gift card to each pair of tutors and require that they meet for a coffee after both observations are complete. This builds culture and makes the experience a bit more fun. Don’t worry about policing what is discussed, just let them talk about what they want to.

Peer evaluation fits into this commonly deployed three-part model:

1. Self-reflection - Tutors record and review their own sessions
2. Two-way peer observation - Tutors observe each other and provide feedback
3. Director observation - Review by the director with structured feedback

3. Measuring Tutor-by-Tutor Quality

Implement regular post-session surveys for students that include tutor-specific questions like:

• "How effectively did the tutor explain complex concepts in a way you could understand?"
• "How responsive was the tutor to your questions during the session?"

Making these questions quantitative (e.g. 1-5 rating) allows you to review tutor performance side by side. This data provides interesting insights, even if it isn't the end-all-be-all of evaluation.

4. Creating Regular Feedback Loops

The feedback you collect should fuel a continuous learning cycle. Ensure there's a regular process for passing student feedback to your tutors.

This article (also linked above) provides some sample questions that are commonly used in post-session student feedback forms.

The key here is a process for sharing this feedback with tutors. For example, exporting all feedback once per term, anonymizing it, and sharing with tutors for discussion during your review.

Session Structure

First impressions play a crucial role in making students feel it would be worthwhile to come back. By creating a consistent session structure, tutors can deliver quality experiences every time. The key pieces are the beginning and the end of the session.

First Five Minutes

The opening minutes of a session are critical. The tutor should take charge at this point: “Here is how this session will go”. Students want to feel they are in good hands and that the tutor has a plan to help them.

We recommend the following flow:

• Greeting
  • Set a calm and focused tone.
  • Brief personal check-in ("How's your day going?") - adjust this “small talk” in length depending on student’s reaction and desire to engage.
• Agenda Setting
  • State amount of time in session.
  • Ask about the learner’s top goal, and any secondary goals.
  • If lots of goals are shared, ask to rank which goals are most important - try to assess what is realistic.
  • Consider setting time checkpoints, e.g. “At 12:15 we should be moving on to this topic, so we’ll set a time and see where we’re at”.
  • Tell them we’ll need 5 minutes to close and set an alarm on your phone.
• Session Framing
  • Get buy-in to be collaborative:
    • “Before jumping in, just a reminder that my goal is to get you to think through concepts and understand them, not just give answers. I’ll ask you questions as we go, and we’ll try to have a back and forth, collaborative session. Sound good?”
    • If they commit verbally to participate in this way, they are more likely to do so.

Last Five Minutes

The final minutes are also important. The main theme is deciding upon the best next steps for the student, which may include scheduling another session right then and there.

It’s easy to realize you are out of time and then awkwardly wrap up with a lot still unfinished. That is what we want to avoid.

We recommend the following flow:

1. Alarm goes off (the tutor should have set this alarm during the agenda-setting phase)
2. Even if mid-problem, say “we need to pause to discuss where we’re at.”
3. Compare where you are versus where you planned to be during agenda-setting
   • If the student needs more help…
     • Schedule another session now, with you or a colleague, to fit in before any deadlines
     • Help them craft a post-session study plan. This is critical. A couple of minutes on this can make their next few hours of studying that much more productive.
   • If the student is happy with where they are at…
     • Offer to schedule another session a few weeks into the future. This is a re-engagement key. Say something like: “Glad we got your goals done today. A lot of my students like to schedule another session about 3 weeks out, just to keep consistency. Would you like to do that?”

A clear and consistent start and end process gives your tutors confidence. It feels good to execute the start and the end of any meeting well.

Creating a Welcoming Environment

Beyond the tutor-student interaction, the physical and social environment of your center plays a significant role in re-engagement.

Physical Space Considerations

When you have a good experience at a store or restaurant, what is it about the space that is inviting? Apply these same principles to your center:

• Immediate acknowledgment when students enter
• Clear navigation so they know where to go
• Comfortable seating arranged for collaboration
• Resources readily available (whiteboards, markers, reference materials)

Simple changes that we have seen centers implement:

• Arranging desks in pods or other collaborative seating
• Adding plants and good lighting
• Training front desk staff on welcoming protocols

Coaching Tutors on Creating a Welcoming Environment

Many tutors have academic skills but need a bit of coaching on hospitality. This can be a little uncomfortable to bring up with tutors, but is important nonetheless.

Dean Blumberg from Connecticut State shared the following sample of his style when talking to tutors about greeting students and not wearing headphones in the space:

"I know there is going to be downtime, and I'm happy to let you do your own thing when it's quiet, but I want students to feel comfortable walking into our space. If students come in, they are probably nervous. It's helpful for them to feel welcomed. So I’d like to ask that we do no earbuds, close the laptop, make eye contact, and say hello."

Email Reminders to Past Students

Even students who had a great experience might forget to return without occasional prompts.

Email Campaigns

At minimum, send a center update email at the beginning of each term to all past users including:

• Updated hours and services
• New tutors or specialties available
• Direct booking link
• Consider sharing testimonials or success stories

For a second level of email campaign, check out our downloadable guide on sending a monthly email newsletter to students as a more advanced way to do email re-engagement.

Measuring Re-Engagement

As with all funnel steps, clear metrics help track improvement:

Conclusion

Re-engagement is where the real magic happens—converting one-time users into regular visitors who tell others about the great experience they’ve had.

The formula is straightforward but requires consistent attention:

• Deliver high-quality experiences through well-trained tutors
• Structure sessions for success
• Create a welcoming environment
• Provide gentle reminders that your services exist

I hope you’ve found something useful in this article. How do these items align with your practices? If we are missing anything, please let us know! We always appreciate the feedback.

Ben Holmquist
CEO, Penji
‍ben.h@penjiapp.com