Online Tutoring is when a tutor begins to teach a student with the aid of a computer or wired device as their medium. With the rise of educational technology, online tutoring has become a bigger industry. Students would enlist themselves online to have tutors teach them a variety of subjects such as English, Science, Math, and sometimes even more advanced subjects such as programming.
So what are benefits of online tutoring?
Benefits of Online Tutoring
Online tutoring can have a variety of benefits.
- Students find themselves having their own notes. – What makes real life learning hard is the student having to copy notes word per word. And this can be quite difficult especially for a student who is trying to understand and process. Online tutoring allows the creation of chat logs which can serve as the notes.
- There is no forced hierarchy. – Commonly, students often shrink back in the presence of a tutor due to the acknowledgement that there is a hierarchy in which the tutor is someone they have to listen to. However, the beauty of online tutoring is that it can remove that sense of hierarchy and allow them to see as equal.
- Easy access of research material – Online tutoring would allow the tutor to send the information in advance for the student to look into. Because of this, students have more time to think and reflect on the topic rather than just agreeing.
- It’s a private session; rarely any distractions. – The common problem of having real life tutoring is how distracted a person can get. The noise pollution in the area, the multiple voices coming from different corners of the room can serve as a distraction. Also, students who are highly anxious may work better in this environment because of the lack of evaluative apprehension.
- Little to no language barriers – Especially for students who are trying to master and practice English, online tutoring can teach them read and convey their thoughts in English. Doing so will help foreign students build their confidence especially when learning English.
Common argument against Online Tutoring
One of the common arguments that people have against Online Tutoring is that the interaction no longer becomes meaningful (Arbaugh & Benbunan-Fich, 2007) . The reason why parents put their children through tutoring or online schools is to help children develop psychosocially, being able to interact with children their own age. Another is that there is a common misconception about online tutoring. Some people believe that it will be a program or a form of artificial intelligence that would replace the teacher which would prevent the learning from being personalized (Kenny & Pahl, 2005). However, there’s a misconception here. Learning can be more personalized because online tutorials are often one on one and opt for more creative ways of learning (Hawkridge & Wheeler, 2010) .
Other studies have tackled the difficulties that tutors may face when they begin their online tutoring (Hawkridge & Wheeler, 2010). One of the common reasons was that they would find difficulty in replicating what would initially be easier in real life: presentations. Another would be the requirement of being tech savvy. However with the rapid development of technology, becoming tech savvy may slowly become more of a minor problem than it would be a major. User interfaces are made easier and software engineers are creating programs that would be easier to understand in comparison to the old programs.
And if you feel the need to try online tutoring, contact us through our Facebook page and we can help set you up with our best tutors.
Sources:
Arbaugh, J. B., & Benbunan-Fich, R. (2007). The importance of participant interaction in online environments. Decision support systems, 43(3), 853-865.
Hawkridge, D., & Wheeler, M. (2010). Tutoring at a distance, online tutoring and tutoring in Second Life. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-learning, 13(1).
Kenny, C., & Pahl, C. (2005). Automated tutoring for a database skills training environment (Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 58-62). ACM.
Rosenberg, M. J., Rosenthal, R., & Rosnow, R. L. (1969). The conditions and consequences of evaluation apprehension.
Ventura, A., & Jang, S. (2010). Private tutoring through the internet: Globalization and offshoring. Asia Pacific Education Review, 11(1), 59-68.