The primary operational setting for the CSTutor tool is Computer Science department at California Polytechnic State University. Computer Science departments from others schools are secondary operational settings. A third setting and trivial setting is within a different department for use with non-Computer Science material.

The CS Tutor tool is designed as a supplement to a Computer Science course. As in a course there are two types of users: 1) Instructors and 2) Students. Instructors create tutorials on their own machines and save them on a department central server. Students download course(s) from the central server to a department machine or one at home.