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To maximize online tutoring success, tutors should define clear objectives, prepare engaging materials, build rapport, deliver content effectively, and provide timely feedback. Students should set specific goals, come prepared, minimize distractions, ask questions, and study consistently before, during, and after sessions.
Online tutoring has the potential to become a gratifying and versatile way for an educator to share their skills and knowledge with learners from varied backgrounds. To ensure that these sessions are engaging and effective a tutor is required to do a lot of planning and preparation.
Online tutoring can also present various challenges for students making it difficult for them to maximise the learning outcome. Therefore it is necessary from a student’s perspective too, to know how to get the most out of online tutoring sessions.
This blog offers 5 tips for tutors and students to conquer online tutoring sessions.
Let’s explore the essential steps to construct an effective online tutoring session:
Defining the outcomes the educator and the learners want to achieve will help one tailor the content, delivery style, feedback, and more. It will result in sessions that are more suitable for the students, their style and level.
Tutors can consider using a SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) framework to set objectives for each session. For example, an objective can be ‘identifying and correcting the recurring grammatical mistakes’.
The materials a tutor will use in their sessions can include documents, videos, slides, games, quizzes, and other interactive resources. A tutor has to ensure that the materials in use should be relevant, engaging, and clear.
Sharing materials with students before a session is also good practice. Students would be primed before delving deeper into each concept or topic.
This is perhaps the most important step for constructing an effective study session where many well-educated tutors struggle. Building affinity or a good rapport means building a sense of mutual understanding, trust, and respect.
It will contribute to an enhanced motivation to learn, participate, and perform from the student’s end. Practising active listening, and asking questions to understand students' points of view is necessary to build this affinity.
Once a tutor has managed to build a rapport with their students, delivering the content is the next most important job. This involves demonstrating, explaining, and teaching or modelling the strategies, concepts or skills necessary for the students to learn.
Using simple well-paced language, clear pronunciation, analogies and examples and avoiding technical terms or jargon can make these study sessions better. Moreover, varying the delivery method and implementing a versatile batch of activities can keep the learners' minds engaged.
Feedback is positive, negative, or constructive information that a tutor provides their students about their progress and performance. Providing specific and actionable feedback at the proper time is essential to make feedback work effectively.
Moreover, a tutor should also encourage students to assess the teaching and provide them with constructive feedback.
Here are some helpful tips for students to enhance the outcome of private online tutoring:
Conveying to the tutor what a student wants to achieve through the study sessions is necessary for each student. If a student specifies a goal, the tutor can design a learning plan that is optimised for that goal. Being specific about the goals for each study session will also help students stay focused and take an active interest in the class.
Apart from keeping the learning supplies ready (pen and paper, charged phone, tablet, or laptop), students should also keep all relevant notes, textbooks, syllabi, and assignments ready by their side before an online tutoring session starts.
Students should read and prepare before a session using the materials from the previous session and the materials the tutor has provided for the upcoming session. This will make each study session extremely productive.
Students should know that not all topics would be equally interesting. Reducing distractions is especially necessary when synch topics come up and demand extra attention from the students' end to stay engaged.
To reduce distractions what students can do is make the learning environment as quiet as possible. It is better if there are no things in the room (such as cell phones, television, and so on) that can divert a student's attention during challenging sessions.
If the preparation before a session is good a student would generally have a lot of questions to ask. Taking notes during such preparation lets a student get all clarifications from the tutor. This is also an effective practice during an online session.
Taking notes about sections that students do not understand will help afterwards in getting further clarification. It also helps the tutor to better understand the students’ needs which in turn helps them to improve the content delivery each time.
Online tutoring platforms are places where educators can transfer their knowledge to students remotely, however, this can not replace students’ study time. A student has to study before, during, and after the online session to fully reap the benefits.
Revising what a tutor has taught the class before, going through the study materials for the upcoming class, taking notes, identifying problem areas, asking those during the class, taking further notes, and revising the points of the present session are essential to achieve a student's learning goals.
Online tutoring has become an extremely effective way of transferring useful knowledge to a variety of students. With the 5 tips for tutors and 5 for students both parties can benefit significantly in their pursuit of mastering online tutoring sessions. This will help both the teacher and the student to successfully progress to their end goal and achieve academic success.
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