online tutors for kids

online tutors for kids

The Impact and Effectiveness of Online Tutoring for Children

1. Introduction to Online Tutoring for Children

Key concepts: In order to situate this review within a relevant context, it is important to highlight that this experimental impact evaluation of the tutor-proof online tutoring programme MyTutor was commissioned by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), an independent charity dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement. The EEF is charged with informing education policy and commissioning cross-disciplinary research that contributes to decisions to improve learning for disadvantaged pupils and schools. These priorities are based on the evidence of need and impact on a day context of all the strategies and interventions that the EEF assesses and evaluates. The EEF’s evidence-based resources are made available for free for schools and link with supporting information.

Introduction: Online tutoring for children is becoming a separate and distinct mode of educational support for the younger generation. A relatively recent arrival in the educational domain, the online tutoring market is experiencing growth at a rapid pace. In the UK, schools have turned to online tutoring to support their pupils, while parents are becoming increasingly aware of its potential as a resource to help children learn.

2. Benefits and Challenges of Online Tutoring for Children

Online tutoring, like in-person tutoring, provides a personalized approach. Because schools have so many regulations these days, the personalization is no longer available within some schools, depending on curriculum, numbers of students in the class, and other requirements. Online tutoring can provide this unique feature through the choice of tutor, time of tutoring, and a help difference that may not be available through other person-to-person teaching/tutoring. Online tutoring can be accessed by anyone, anywhere, with an internet connection. The same cannot be said for in-person tutoring, which is specifically geographical and based on tutor availability during an agreed-upon time. For example, if a student had face-to-face tutoring during a lunch period, there will be no alternative times or days available for tutoring. The only way an alternative can occur is scheduling a new appointment. In theory, online tutoring can occur at any time or on any day as long as the tutor is available. Some children may not enjoy talking with or working with a webcam present or see it as too ‘staged’ or unnatural—in which case, a phone-only option may be available upon agreement. However, online tutoring also has its challenges. The child has to sit down and focus, something they sometimes find difficult to do, let alone the focus to complete work. Technical difficulties are also common, as are the perceived lack of face-to-face interaction and loss of self-discipline necessary to learn with others in a personal way.

Research has shown that the online tutoring of children can be effective. Similar to the needs of undergraduate students, online tutoring can accommodate scheduling limitations, extend the range of tutor expertise available, and supplement tutoring that takes place during school. Because it occurs online, it allows for the virtual whiteboard necessary for the tutorial subject. It also eliminates commuting, which often has to be scheduled into the process. Another benefit of online tutoring is when the child is left with a problem, they can stop a tutoring session, look up terms and operations, and then return. This level of flexibility cannot be maintained within a home visit.

3. Best Practices and Strategies for Online Tutoring

The use of innovative, interactive, and engaging tools is particularly important with children. Interaction through the use of a whiteboard tool—specifically, to draw, annotate, screen share, or co-browse—has proven to hold some Kinder, or younger, learners’ attention and focus better than traditional tools used in conventional tutoring. Additionally, kinesthetic tools are useful in teaching specific kinds of materials. Our expert tutored during the pandemic and gave a math lesson, followed by practice activities using puzzle pieces with a kindergarten student. This child was not successful in traditional online tutoring. She was a kinesthetic learner, and our expert was successful in reaching and teaching her through the use of the puzzle pieces. Communication is key in reaching and facilitating learning for these children. Tutored children need to talk about themselves a lot. These tutors should know the names of their clients’ pets and should pay attention to the child’s surroundings. Using a clear explanation with questions and answers will help to engage the younger community. Children’s learning is super important in current times, and the pandemic has definitely rocked their learning progression and their motivations for learning. Our experts often note that the younger ones like to talk and often miss going to school and their friends and their teacher. It is good to check in with the student from time to time.

With the rise of distance learning technologies, virtual tutoring has attracted considerable attention, particularly in a K-12 context. As in-person tutoring continues to be interrupted at a significant level for various reasons (e.g., school shutdowns, sicknesses, or busy schedules) and as students are not all comfortable with or in environments that accommodate online tutoring, it is becoming increasingly important to identify those settings in which online tutoring is most effective. Below we identify best practices and strategies for virtual tutoring to be most effective with children, and speculate about in which environments virtual tutoring may work best.

4. The Role of Parents and Teachers in Supporting Online Tutoring

Teachers who are equally enthusiastic about children’s reading interest and learning will enhance learning. Such positive factors should be communicated to parents so that their children are more encouraged to participate. Every teacher can provide parents with useful tools and strategies for supporting their children in reading. From the point of view of school staff, parents are experienced in helping their children at home with reading. In the time of COVID-19, parents are no longer only helping their children at home with reading; they are also guiding them online. In particular, being active in school is an essential function of parent teaching. An emotionally supportive teacher makes learning easier and more efficient.

The role of teachers

A parent who demonstrates positive attitudes and expectations about reading and education can easily and significantly promote the learning interest at home. They should display a positive attitude towards reading books and educational-related materials, read a story with their child regularly, encourage the child to discuss the book and give their opinion, provide an example for the child on how to look up a personal item, and instruct the child on how to learn, including how to ask questions and consider learning methods. Parental support with remote and online learning reduces the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on reading. Neither the students nor their families had digital resources to help them with this transition. All families should have resources for digital learning, and both parents and children need to learn how to use these digital resources.

The role of parents

5. Future Trends and Innovations in Online Tutoring for Children

A feature of private English tutorials for Vietnamese children, mentioned above, was long hours of study, which might also reflect the desire for parental supervision of screen time or a home environment unsuited to educational activity. Many of the models examined above paid tutors by the hour; a potential effect of covering drop-out is to increase session rates, which might have an impact on the productivity of individual tutors. A further progression would be a study tracking only children, allowing a greater exploration of their relationship with one particular platform, or mapping tutoring over longer periods. We anticipate that future years will see refined methodological approaches with longitudinally gathered data, and possibly experiments informed by the review. Models which integrate adaptive learning techniques and artificial intelligence (AI) platforms may also become more popular in the future, as AI becomes established, and we look forward to research which evaluates new developments empirically. This would, however, require that the models are opened to researchers and providers.

Future trends and innovations in online tutoring for children. The last part of this paper aims to provide an insight into what the future may hold for online tutoring for children. This could encompass the use of different technologies, pedagogies, and broader social trends, or perhaps new companies and platforms that we are not yet aware of. The areas discussed in this paper likely have some impact on this future landscape. Those tutoring companies who cater to international students in Asia are going to see the highest growth rates, as well as allowing the participation of teachers physically located anywhere rather than local provision. Institutional education is slowly starting to explore online tutoring for children, which has the potential to change its efficacy. While belief in the value of online tutoring does seem quite firmly established, we also consider topics for future research. At the time of writing, much of online tutoring consists of either one-on-one provision or replicating the goal of formal classroom learning. We might anticipate interviews hinting at more tailored educational paths and diverse goals from online tutoring: for instance, teaching and testing undertaken for children but also other family members, both older and younger. An enhancement of this might be to explore actual interactions: what do educational trios of parent, child, and tutor all bring to the online platform?