Learning the Socratic way

Each Thursday evening in Sioux City, Iowa, 18-year-old Mia Gordon heads out to a meeting at her church. It isn’t a Bible study, however, but part of her college studies: Once a week she meets with a tutor and a fellow student to discuss lessons from her professional communications class.

Gordon is enrolled online at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Fla. And although she submits coursework and takes classes for her communications degree remotely, the weekly sessions bring in-person interaction to her studies.

Her tutor, she says, works in the media field and challenges her and her classmate to dig deeper into their lessons. That includes when they disagree, as they did in one discussion over the merits of American students aspiring to be influencers. “Stuff that I would have just written off as obvious, he just pushed me [and said], ‘OK, well, explain why that’s obvious to you, explain the background of your thought process,’” Gordon said.

The weekly meetings, called tutorial halls, are thanks to a partnership with Christian Halls International (CHI). The organization, which partners with Gordon’s school and others, merges Oxford-style tutorial halls with accredited online degrees to form an unusual but innovative approach to secondary education.

All of Gordon’s online courses from Southeastern University have a tutorial hall. They meet at the church, in rented business conference rooms, or at coffee shops. Her macroeconomics and web design classes this semester each have their own tutors, and each hall hosts up to around five Southeastern students in the Sioux City region who are taking courses online.

The discussions are Socratic in style: They operate as a dialogue, with the tutor using open-ended questions to challenge students to explore ideas. Tutors also provide additional instructions that help Gordon better understand certain topics, like web coding. According to Gordon, the halls offer “the best of both worlds” of online and in-person education.

Nicholas Ellis, founder and president of CHI, noted the campus-based college experience often pulls students away from their home communities, yet online education lacks physical interaction. His organization aims to bridge the two.

The local tutorial halls operate independently and are created to meet a community’s needs, Ellis explained. For instance, one small-town sheriff in central Texas was frustrated at seeing his local high schoolers leave town, earn criminal justice degrees in Austin, and then get police jobs elsewhere. CHI worked with him to start a hall, which the sheriff then led as a tutor—teaching on criminal justice, appropriate use of force, and building trust within communities—with the goal of raising and hiring local officers familiar with the community.

A tutor dialogues with students at Chula Vista Christian University, a CHI partner in California. Chula Vista Christian University

“We want to leverage the people that God has given these places,” Ellis said. “It’s giving retirement-age, wise elders in their community with a lifetime of service in education or business or nursing or public service … a role to contribute to the education of the next generation.”

Founded in Brazil and Uganda and later launching in the United States in 2020, CHI says it now has 178 halls and around 2,500 students in North America. It has partnered with eight colleges and universities to offer approximately 350 accredited degrees.

The Oxford-style approach stems from Ellis’ own experience attending the University of Oxford more than a decade ago. Prior to that, he said, he built K-12 educational programs in Brazil as a missionary.

He thought of the idea for CHI two weeks into his Oxford experience. While sitting in the university gardens and brainstorming how to expand Brazil’s programs to include college education, he struck on the tutorial hall approach as a solution.

Ellis said CHI’s tutors are paid through the organization’s partner universities, funded by student tuition that ranges from $100 to $450 a credit. CHI also offers dual-credit courses for high schoolers.

Letícia Barbosa, a dual-credit student in Brazil, took courses through CHI for three years. The 17-year-old graduated high school in December and is currently studying to pass exams to get into Brazilian universities.

Barbosa, homeschooled since 2017, said CHI’s structure challenged her to view her courses through a Biblical lens, with her economics tutor instructing her to find Bible verses to support her work.

While not all hall tutors have an educational background, they have subject matter competence. For instance, former pilots tutor classes for aviation degrees, and pastors tutor students pursuing a master of divinity, Ellis said.

Training of tutors is pivotal to a program like CHI, noted Stan Rosenberg, the vice president for research and scholarship at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. He described CHI’s tutorial model as a “great concept” as long as its tutors don’t merely affirm students but challenge their thinking through questions and discussion.

“It’s like good coaching in sports,” he said. “A good coach has got to take that good athlete to the next level, and you don’t do it by just pandering [to] them.”

Scott Masson, head of the English literature department at Tyndale University in Toronto, Canada, serves as CHI’s ambassador to Canada. For families who have lost trust in the education system, he said, the program gives their children another route for pursuing post-secondary education. Its model allows students to stay at home, grow deeper roots in their faith, and network locally while pursuing higher education.

“[CHI takes] a much bigger picture approach to education than simply passing on information through the classroom,” he said. “Success does not mean leaving home.”