How are tutorials graded? Is a tutorial a one semester workload or a full year workload?
Tutorials are a semester long.
Each professor does it a bit differently, but usually there are 5 sections of an individual tutorial held each day with 2 students each. There is a lot of collaboration in creating a direction for the course with your student peer and professor. The general format is that you and your co-partner alternate a writing assignment of about 5-8 pages every two weeks. In the week you don’t write, you peer review, and vice versa. There’s discussion of the assigned reading as well (usually lengthy, but designed in conjunction with student interest and professor expertise) as well. Professors give feedback as well for becoming a better writer/developing a stronger argument. You can watch a video of it here: https://www.williams.edu/academics/tutorials/
Grading isn’t really the point of a tutorial. The statistics are that tutorials on average give out higher grades than introductory, lecture style courses, but there’s a bias in that the students who take tutorials tend to be more experienced and passionate to that course. Williams is academically rigorous across the board.
Tutorials are evaluated on a semester basis, just like most other courses at Williams. However, they tend to be much more academically intense and involve a much higher workload (frequent 5-7 page papers, weekly readings of 200-300+ pages, longer problem sets + lab experiences, etc.).