A new app is coming to campus that allows students to tutor each other at any time during the day or night.
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TuLi is the brainchild of Quinnipiac alumnus Michael Falchiere and Tulane University alumnus Ben Kanter.
The two lifelong friends decided to create the app after seeing friends struggle to find tutors.
“A lot of students say there’s a lot of stress [when finding a tutor],” Falchiere said. “We don’t want students searching through email lists to find a tutor and there isn’t one place to do it all, so we decided to create that marketplace to help students find the perfect tutor.”
To become a tutor, students must have a 3.5 GPA with an A or A- in the course they plan to tutor for. Tutors have to be a member of the Quinnipiac community and can apply by sending in their transcript on the web app.
Once a student is approved for any courses they can and want to tutor in, they are allowed to create their own schedule and choose their own rates according to Falchiere.
To find a tutor, students can search on the app by putting in the course, price range, availability and what they need help with.
There are four sections students can choose from including homework help, test and exams, projects and presentations. The tutee must follow and abide by his/her teacher’s academic integrity policy when signing up for a session.
Falchiere said students can meet their tutor anywhere on campus to study except for residence halls.
“We don’t want anyone joking around with this, it’s not a hookup app,” he said. “We want students to take this seriously and we cannot control what happens in a dorm room.”
If a session moves to a dorm room or residence hall, TuLi no longer affiliates anymore with that session.
Falchiere said it is important students know this app is not meant to compete with the Learning Commons.
“One of our goals was to provide tutors for students who study late at night while the learning center is closed,” he said. “The learning center can’t do it all and our goal is to help compliment their resources.”
Senior Marissa Faretta said she would use the app because it is easy to get in touch with a tutor.
“I like how the students who need a tutor can directly contact you and pay you all through the app, so it’s kind of like you don’t even have to discuss it,” she said.
Falchiere also said that the learning center’s main focus is on entry level courses, where TuLi will focus more on advanced level courses that are higher up in a student’s major.
“The class sizes get a lot smaller as you get to those higher level courses so there aren’t as many tutors for them,” he said. “To combat this we have targeted many of our tutors towards those 300 and 400 level courses.”
The mobile app will be available for iOS and Android devices in early September. Falchiere said this app will help students find a tutor in one easy process.
“Finding, utilizing, paying and rating your tutor is all done through one integrated system making it easy for students to follow,” he said. “This way students aren’t going to a bunch of different sites and going through email chains to set up a time to meet.”
Senior Lindsey Banks is one of the student ambassadors for TuLi. She said the reason she became involved was because she related to people who needed an easy way to find a tutor.
“There were so many times when it was late at night and I didn’t have a person to go to and I needed a resource to help me,” she said. “I needed an outlet and for me this is exactly what this app does. I think this app is genius and has a lot of potential to be successful in colleges everywhere.”
There are currently 25 confirmed tutors who will be on TuLi for this upcoming semester. Falchiere said he will be holding meet and greets with these tutors as well as anyone interested in TuLi.
Falchiere plans to give the first 50 tutors a TuLi T-shirt and eventually hopes to set up a TuLi foundation, which will be made up of donations that they plan to put toward one student’s tuition for a year.
Eventually, he hopes to set up a parent portal so parents can put money towards their child’s tutoring sessions.
Falchiere said he hopes that more students will use the app for tutoring and they will not be afraid to get the help they need.
“Some kids are embarrassed to ask for help face-to-face,” he said. “Through this app it is easier and it gets rid of that fear of finding a tutor.”
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