The Tutorial Model
Christian Halls employ a tutorial model of education that prioritizes mentorship, dialogue, and personal formation — drawing from the Oxford and Cambridge tutorial systems and classical models of education.
The tutorial model draws inspiration from the Oxford and Cambridge tutorial systems, as well as classical models of education where students learned directly from masters through dialogue, questioning, and guided exploration. This approach has produced some of history's greatest thinkers and leaders for centuries.
By clearing the rubble of a failed educational system that emphasizes mass production and standardization, Christian Halls are returning to this time-tested approach that treats students as whole persons rather than consumers of educational content.
Research on private, small-group tutoring shows tutored students performing two standard deviations better than those taught by conventional methods — the average tutored student was above 98% of students in the control class. The large lecture was never an educational ideal; it was an industrial compromise for scale. The tutorial requires no such compromise.
The Tutorial Cycle
Students meet regularly in small groups — typically 3–8 students — with a tutor who guides learning through discussion, questioning, and critical feedback. Unlike lectures where students passively receive information, tutorials require active engagement from every participant.
Before each tutorial, students complete assigned readings, prepare written work, or work through practical exercises. This preparation forms the basis for tutorial discussion — the conversation cannot begin where preparation ends.
Students present their work, engage in guided discussion, and receive immediate feedback from both their tutor and peers. The focus is on developing critical thinking and communication skills — articulation and defense, not passive delivery.
Following tutorials, students revise their work, extend their understanding through additional study, and reflect on how their learning connects to broader questions of faith, purpose, and service.
Students apply their learning through projects, community engagement, and practical experiences that contribute to local flourishing. Work is then submitted to the university partner for assessment and accredited review toward the degree.
Benefits of the Tutorial Model
Personalized Learning
Tutorials adapt to each student's level and interests, so they engage the material directly rather than at a distance.
Active Engagement
Students cannot be passive in tutorials. They have to articulate and defend their ideas, which is what builds real understanding.
Mentorship
Close relationships with tutors provide academic, professional, and personal guidance that extends beyond any single course.
Skill Development
Tutorials build critical thinking, communication, and intellectual virtue that carry across disciplines.
Community Formation
Small groups build real relationships among students who learn from and support one another over time.
Faith Integration
The tutorial format lets academic content and Christian practice connect directly in conversation.
Tutors in the CHI model are more than instructors. They are the most important human element of the model — the local experts who carry the formation in their sector, who know the community the students will serve, and who model not only intellectual excellence but vocational integrity and place-rootedness.
Tutors are people with real expertise in their fields — not only academic credentials, though those count. A practicing attorney, a working physician, a master craftsman, a pastor with decades of theological engagement: these are the tutors of CHI Halls.
The relationship is tutorial, not supervisory. Tutors meet regularly with students individually and in small groups, providing guidance, feedback, and accountability — often over several years.
Tutors are from the community, known to the community, and committed to the community. They model not only academic excellence but faith integration, professional integrity, and community engagement.
The tutorial model operates through the collaboration of two guilds: the university guild and the community guild. They are complementary, not hierarchical. The university provides accreditation, curricular standards, and transcripts. The Hall provides place, formation, and tutorial mentorship by tutors who are practitioners in their fields.
The Oxford Tutorial System and Modern Education
The Oxford University college tutorial system, rooted in medieval Oxford and Cambridge, is central to our educational philosophy at Christian Halls International. Inspired by his own Oxford experience, our President, Dr. Nicholas Ellis, aimed to bring the tutorial model's intimate discussions to communities worldwide.
In the context of the modern American university, applicants to the Christian Hall program frequently ask why a student would choose to study at a Christian Hall, with its system of local Tutors, Fellows, and a small cohort of students, rather than move to a mainstream university or seminary campus, or enroll in one of the many online programs available.
The benefits of the small-scale tutorial model are numerous. We could, for example, enumerate the opportunity for intimate Christian discipleship, long-term multi-generational friendship, the opportunity for integration into local community life, or the possibilities of designing learning outcomes specific to the needs of the region, language, and culture.
In this short essay, however, I would refer the reader to the increasingly visible fact that near-universal access to higher education on the one hand, and the general availability of comprehensive data on the other, have not enabled the kind of virtuous formation we desire to see for our next generations. Rather, we see a general degrading of both the intellect and the formation of the soul. Why, then, do we continue to commit ourselves to an educational model that has failed in creating either virtuous people or a virtuous society?
"…winning a lottery to attend a supposedly better school in Chicago makes no difference on educational outcomes. In New York? Makes no difference…. Parents in many cities are obsessive about getting their kids into competitive exam high schools, but when you adjust for differences in ability, attending them makes no difference."
— Freddie deBoer
When looking for the single factor that has the most significant impact on academic outcomes, Erik Hoel comes to the conclusion that "there exists an agreed-upon and specific answer to the single best way to educate children, a way that has clear, obvious, and strong effects. It's an answer that was well-known historically and is also observed by education researchers today": private, small-group tutoring.
The results were stunning: tutored students performed two standard deviations better than students who learn via conventional instructional methods — the average tutored student was above 98% of the students in the control class. Two standard deviations is the difference between a C and an A on a grading scale.
"We sequestered children from great minds, and, perhaps it's worth briefly noting, we also sequestered great minds from children."
— Erik Hoel
Why do we shy away from methods that have historically produced the greatest minds and the greatest social leaders? The greatest barriers seem to be a combination of loyalties and brand affiliations to legacy institutions, a lingering hope that these institutions will somehow form good people, and the overwhelming financial and marketing machine that has become modern secondary and higher education.
The truth, however, is that despite the power of marketing and the allure of branding, formation comes in small packages: personal, human, incarnational. We have access to more instant data than at any time in history; whether we have the will to move from data to the formation of wisdom in the hearts of our children will be the question that governs the future of our next generation.