Stepping Stone Tutors now offers online tutoring services for most Math and Science subjects. The new service uses an online whiteboard system, which serves as a virtual classroom for the tutor and the students. Aside from functioning as a visual aid, this online whiteboard also has a chat box where tutors and students interact and share files or videos easily.

According to Andrew Cogen, CEO of Stepping Stone Tutors, online tutoring reinforces the lessons learned during classes at school and during in-home tutoring sessions. A typical online tutoring session would last 20 to 30 minutes long. For the best results, students need to spend one to two hours per week with an online tutor in addition to their in-home tutoring sessions.

This new tutoring service is also available on demand for students who might need immediate help with their assignments, projects or day-to-day lessons. Students who already have in-home tutors can take advantage of online tutoring whenever they cannot meet with their tutors in person. An online tutoring session can remedy changes in schedule when unexpected circumstances come up. Being online also saves time usually spent on travelling to the student’s home or to a designated place conducive to learning.

This type of service follows the principle of blended learning where educators use technology for remote learning along with traditional methods of teaching. Online tutoring does not replace face-to-face interaction between teachers and students and between classmates. In fact, online tutoring enhances the quality of learning that the students glean from classroom activities, and it helps them develop skills in studying and learning on their own.

For those interested, registration begins with a free account at Stepping Stone Tutors Online (http://www.steppingstonetutors.com/online_home.php). Students can then purchase time to use on the website. For a demonstration of the online whiteboard system, you can visit http://ssconnect.steppingstonetutors.com/Demo.htm and watch how it works.

Image via Wikipedia

Blended learning combines the advantages of the traditional learning model, which utilizes the power of social interaction to educate, and the online learning model, which uses the power of the Internet to widen the scope and increase the depth of discussion between teacher and students.

Relatively new to education, blended learning proves itself a very effective tool in dealing with many issues in teaching. An issue that has plagued teachers for a long is the problem of teaching students that learn at different levels with different styles. Some students learn better when spoken to and some students prefer to learn on their own. Sometimes, students with learning disabilities or those who learn at a slower pace may find classroom learning a difficult hurdle to overcome.

With the advent of blended learning, traditional classroom education becomes more flexible and adaptive to the needs of its students rather than the school’s system. Students receive instruction from multiple sources, such as interactive quizzes, tutorial videos and learning games aside from their textbooks. The students also interact with online tutors aside from their teachers.

Blended learning that utilizes online tutoring does not compromise the social development of the student. Each week, the students meet in a classroom with their teachers to discuss the week’s lessons, to present their papers or projects, or to take an exam to evaluate their progress. When needed, guidance from online tutors plays an important role in helping the student learn on his or her own.

At first, the Internet was just a novelty, something to look over and experiment with, but since then, its use has pervaded every aspect our modern lives, specifically in education. The Internet plays a vital role in education. Its power to bring together people for learning in what we call online tutoring best exemplifies this role.

Online tutoring usually brings together tutors and tutees in a virtual setting. They meet in a chat room, a website or a forum and arrange specific times to hold tutoring sessions. These times often factor in the differences in time zones between the two parties.

Although commonly associated with language teaching, online tutoring also has other uses. Online tutoring facilitates learning in Math and Science subjects, especially when immediate feedback is given and interactive quizzes and educational games are available for downloads.
However, the popularity of online tutoring does not necessarily mean it can now replace in-home tutoring. Differences between these two types of tutoring present their respective advantages and disadvantages over each other.

Online tutoring requires the use of the computer with a web cam, and a headset with microphone. The student and tutor should have good Internet speed rates that can handle VoIP connections. In-home tutoring, on the other hand, requires less equipment for both tutors and students to hold tutoring sessions.

Online tutoring sessions, especially when pre-recorded material is available, allows flexibility in scheduling. However, it does not allow tutors to work alongside the student’s teachers because of disparity in location. To get over this hurdle, the tutors can provide feedback to the teachers and the parents through email.

Yet, in-home tutoring remains a very effective supplement to institutional learning. The structures of our education system do not permit freedom in learning. An in-home tutor fills in the gaps while fulfilling the role of learning facilitator. A learning facilitator makes learning desirable and easy, especially when the student has difficulties with the subject.

In-home tutoring is also appropriate for helping students with learning disabilities. The tutor functions as a learning facilitator as well as a therapist. Conversely, online tutoring often lacks the human interaction, which plays an important role in therapy and learning.

When considering the kind of tutoring their child needs, parents should factor in each tutoring type’s advantages and disadvantages, as well as the equipment requirements and the tutor’s qualifications.

A lot of blogs talk about traditional learning centers like Huntington or Sylvan or about the relatively new industry of online tutoring; however, few blogs talk about in-home tutoring or what I like to call the “other” option for tutoring.

Traditional learning centers are great for students who are doing well in school and just want to focus on specific skills. It also helps if the parents have a lot of disposable income to invest in one of the programs they offer that tend to start around $800 per class. They do offer their own assessment tests which can help to identify problem areas; however, these areas of need are only in relation to the programs being offered at the learning center and do not necessarily address current school work and low grades which for many families are a larger concern.

What typically happens at Sylvan Learning Center for example is that a student is given an assessment test when they first come to the center. They are subsequently enrolled in a course which would typically be several weeks long. The student would be in a classroom type setting usually with 3 or more other students. The “teacher’s” role is more or less to provide handouts and worksheets for the students to use throughout the course. The worksheets are specifically geared towards helping each student pass the test at the end of the course created by Sylvan.

While this approach may be successful in teaching set skills, it does not typically help most students in real time, students who are failing their classes and not understanding the material and are continuing to fall further behind in school.

The learning center model can be self serving because a student is only “guaranteed” to pass the learning center class which logic would tell us should be an easily attainable goal when the entire course is geared around helping students pass the test at the end. The “guarantee” is that if a student does not pass the class then then can keep taking it until they do. The problem again, is that even if the student passes the class, they are still falling behind in school and not understanding their homework.

In addition to falling behind, the student is using their free time after school to attend the learning center classes and their parents (unless the student can drive) are having to drive them to and from classes at the learning center often several times per week.

One of the other options for tutoring which has become more or less a recent phenomenon with the advent of widespread broadband internet access, is online tutoring. Online tutoring usually takes a totally different approach to learning centers which is to work on current assignments only. Students are able to login and connect with a tutor 24 hours a day and get help in real time.

Online tutoring can be great for families on a budget because it is the cheapest option for getting help with school work. The timing is also quite flexible because a student can get help at anytime throughout the day.

The downside to online tutoring is that the tutor is in another city, often another country altogether which presents some issues for the student, mainly they are not in the same room together or they have a hard time understanding the tutor especially when the tutor lives in India.

This brings me to what I call the “other” option for tutoring which are private in-home tutoring services. In-home tutoring brings the best of both worlds and bridges the gap between the traditional learning center approach and the new resource which is online tutoring.

With in-home tutoring, students can get help in real time on current assignments. The tutor works with them one-on-one at home usually after school. The benefit of the tutor coming to a student’s home is that the parent does not need to drop them off and pick them up again later in the day. In addition, working one-on-one is hugely beneficial to the student being able to ask questions and get the tutor’s full and undivided attention.

An in-home tutor can work on only the subject areas that the parent or student wants help with. Often times a student needs help preparing for a specific standardized test like the ASVAB, THEA, or SAT and more often than not, the student only needs help with certain content areas of that particular test.

What in-home tutoring allows a student to do in this case, is instead of enrolling in an entire course to prepare for their test at a learning center, usually at a premium cost and spending hours at a time working on subject areas the student has already mastered, the student can focus their time on the areas they need the most help with.

Working with an in-home tutor, students only pay for the time they spend with the tutor and can get help right away. In-home tutoring costs less than a learning center course and slightly more than online tutoring, but is often the best option for families who need help in real time for current assignments and tests and who need flexible scheduling.