[FCLCA] Outside tutoring companies

Thu Jan 14 18:57:42 EST 2021

Hi Jennifer,

While we don't use an external company, I do want to provide some feedback about Knack. They reached out to my office about 2 years ago with a standard pitch. I noticed though on their website that our school was already listed as a participating institution. That wasn't correct. I checked the "tutors" they had listed for us and one was a former tutor that was let go and the other was never a UNF student but was acting as a UNF tutor.

I contacted other Universities on their page and many others were also surprised to see their institutions listed without ever have been contacted or notified.

I then started going through their student reviews. I picked three schools at random and found tutors with the exact same review posted over and over again with five star ratings. I've always found that fishy on Google or Amazon reviews, and it looked fishy here.

My AVP and I brought up these concerns, among many others about their model, such as a lack of accountability on the tutor-student interactions and obviously improper vetting practices. We were told they would remove the tutors from their site, but failed to address our other concerns. The tutors were not removed in the months following this conversation.

Since our concerns were not addressed, we informed them we weren't going to be using their services at that time. We thought that would be the end of it. Nope. They instead reached out to other AVPs, VPs, and Deans introducing themselves and acting like this was their first time contacting the school. They even messaged our Ethics Officer, trying to impress people and get them to ask us why we weren't using them. So every few weeks for almost a year we would get emails from random administrators asking if we've heard of Knack and that they sounded great. We again contacted Knack expressing our discontent with their display of unprofessionalism (those tutors were there even a year later but appear to be removed now. Too little, too late though.) and it took their rep meeting with an associate provost of ours before the emails finally stopped.

It's possible other schools have had great interactions or appreciate their services, and maybe they've started acting better since then, but I just wanted to share our experience with them. We're not against third party services, but between the bad vibes, unanswered questions, ignored requests, and going around our back to badger other staff in an attempt to pressure us, this was definitely not going to be it. I just checked their website again and it looks like they took down the page of "participating institutions" they used to have- it was right on their homepage before. I'm assuming that was there while they were working on getting investors as it had Ivy Leaguers and all that.

I hope someone is able to share some of their positive experiences with outside companies and you get what you're looking for!

Thanks,
Dylan

Dylan Charles
Assistant Director, Student Academic Success Services
Undergraduate Studies
University of North Florida
Building 2/Room 1314
P: (904) 620-1008/(980) 213-5959
E: d.charles at unf.edu<mailto:d.charles at unf.edu>
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________________________________
From: FCLCA <fclca-bounces at lists.fsu.edu> on behalf of Jennifer Bebergal via FCLCA <fclca at lists.fsu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2021, 6:10 PM
To: fclca at lists.fsu.edu
Cc: Jennifer Bebergal
Subject: [FCLCA] Outside tutoring companies

Hi everyone,

I hope you are doing well. We have heard that UF is using Knack and is reportedly happy with them. My dean is wondering if any other schools are using outside tutoring companies (Smartthinking, Knack, or others) to supplement the tutoring that you provide. If you are, please share which company, what courses they support, how you fund them and at what level, what type of utilization you get, and what your thoughts are. Thank you all!

Best wishes,

-Jennifer

Jennifer Bebergal, Ed.D.

Associate Dean for Retention and Academic Support

Certified Learning Center Professional - Level 4, Lifetime

Center for Learning And Student Success (CLASS)

Florida Atlantic University

777 Glades Road, GS 223

Boca Raton, FL 33431

561-297-2432

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