On the art of tutoring online
December 12th, 2007 by KateI’ve done a lot of tutoring in person, but I found that you definitely
have to adapt online. First of all, like Jeffrey pointed out, you have
to go a lot farther to make that personal connection. When I’m
tutoring in person I might go overtime by 5 min just to account for
time to chit-chat inbetween problems to get to know the student.
On ziizoo they’re paying by the minute, so I can’t really do that, but
I do like to throw in a little humor every so often to make it a little
more personal.
Also, not being able to read the student is very difficult–you miss
out on a lot of their thought process. If I ask them a leading question
to get them through the next step, I try giving them a minute or two
to mull it over, and then if they’re not writing or typing anything, I ask
if they’re still thinking or stuck. Some people take more time to process
and you don’t want to jump the gun and take away the chance for
them to get it themself, but on the other hand you don’t want to
waste five minutes while they beat their head against the wall
(unbeknownst to you!). It took me a few sessions to make the
adaptation, but now I feel almost as effective online as I am in person.
Sorry that I didn’t quote any classical philsophers, but hopefully this
will help some of you current or prospective tutors!
December 22nd, 2007 at 1:27 am
Kate brings up a very good point regarding time management during a session. In the absence of visual cues, it usually takes a while to figure out how much time a student needs to wrap his or her mind around a concept or problem-solving approach. On a first pass, I often use a 2-minute rule to allow the student to constructively “struggle” with the question, since these instances truly are the breeding grounds of internalization of ideas and concepts. Sometimes, I will check on a student by asking “Any ideas?” or “How’s it going with that?” so they can signal whether they are banging their head against the desk or just on the cusp of understanding. But remember, you can always break down a question to even smaller questions that allow you to understand where a student may be hitting a wall. In order to avoid the time management conundrum, I’ve even suggested to the platform developers that a button to toggle between paid and unpaid time would be very useful and fair!
December 22nd, 2007 at 7:19 am
Perhaps tutors should recommend students using “emoticons” or something simple like that so students can indicate their status without explicitly saying “I am thinking”. To Jeffrey’s point, in the long run we will enable tutors to toggle billing on and off during sessions to allow for things like breaks, trips to the bathroom, etc.
September 17th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
how do u get ppl?
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:02 am
Thank you for your website
I made on photoshop backgrounds for myspace and youtube and whatever
my backgrounds:http://tinyurl.com/6kw9wq
have a good day and thank you again!