How does Online Tutoring work?

Due to COVID-19, online learning has become the new norm for many people. More importantly, with many schools having been closed over the last year, parents have resorted to finding a tutor for their children to ensure they remain exam focused. 

Online tutoring works just as face-to-face tutoring does. Tutors work alongside academic institutions and curriculums to help pupils achieve their results and boost their confidence with studying and exams. An online tutor can review class assignments, support you with GCSE revision and A-level revision and much more. 

How to Book a Session

For online learning to be organised, the student and tutor will arrange a date and time to have their lesson. This can be done through a number of methods. Firstly, before any real session begins with Sherpa, a student and tutor have a free 20 minute introductory session to get to know each other. As you are both speaking and seeing each other on our whiteboard, it makes perfect sense to organise a time and day to book your real sessions in.

Secondly, students and tutors are able to email each other to have sessions booked in. This can be the first session; or to liaise for another session to have a different time if the original has to be cancelled. 

During the COVID period, most freelance online tutors held their lessons via online platforms including Skype, Zoom and Microsoft teams. Now these tools have developed, there are options to share each other’s screens, therefore the tutor can display various study resources, videos and diagrams to the pupil. 

However, more substantial organisations including Sherpa have better tools including our interactive whiteboard (online classroom). The whiteboard enables both student and tutor to see each other, interact and work together on high quality exam content. Sherpa tutors will help you perfect your exam preparation and revision notes to make you confident for the exam season. Click on this link here to understand how the whiteboard works. 

This online classroom shows a video feed from each webcam in the corner of the screen so that both parties can see each other and converse like a normal video-chat. Though, the majority of the screen is the virtual interactive whiteboard in order for both parties to see exactly what is going on. The tutor and pupil can write, draw, paint, shape and long divide their way to achieve success. 

The whiteboard also has the function to upload powerpoints, photos and PDF documents onto the screen. This enables both parties to have the ability to upload external material to ensure sessions are more flexible.  

What are the benefits of receiving online tuition?

Aside from the benefits mentioned above about the technical prowess and ease of use, there are many more advantages.

Convenience-wise, online tuition out-trumps regular tuition everyday. This is because to learn online you are not limited by geography. There is no need for either party to travel to a specific location, this lowers the net cost of the tuition and doesn’t steal as much time as face-to-face meetings. 

Therefore, students are able to have much larger access to private tutors because geography does not restrict who they can see. Therefore, those wanting to learn a new language are able to speak to language tutors all over the world. Furthermore, tutors are additionally able to have access to more students as yet again there are no issues regarding travel with online learning. 

Does it get the Grades?

Online tutoring definitely works! Parents and children can see results go up and targets achieved with the use of an online tutor. Sherpa tutoring works with 1-1 online lessons, meaning any questions or issues are always focused to one person in the session. 

For example, many students find maths in particular very challenging. Students can find equations difficult from KS1, KS2, KS3 all the way up to A-Level. With an online tutor the lesson can concentrate solely on the equations and topics that the student is struggling with. Therefore, creating time outside of a busy classroom to catch up on the topics that they have struggled with throughout the term.

Mazer, an online education resources tool, took an extensive survey from over 18000 students on the topic of online tutoring. The effectiveness of online tutoring can be judged by the reaction of the students who took the survey. Students who have received online tuition believe it helps them achieve their target grades. The 18455 students who also took the poll had 96% came back saying online tutoring is effective and helped with improving grades. 

What is the most common type of online tutoring?

The nature of online tutoring being so versatile to a child or adult can have online tutoring at any age and any subject. Commonly we tend to see most lessons be taught for exam year pupils, 11+, IB, GCSE and A-levels.

On that topic the most common subjects that we see lessons for are Maths & Physics, English and languages. The online tutors from Bramble’s survey recorded that in Q1 and Q2 of 2020, 38% of all lessons taught were Maths. This highlights the importance of tutoring, at some point through their academic career everybody finds themselves struggling and in need of a confidence boost. For whichever situation you are in, there is a tutor for you at Sherpa.