Online Tutoring

Many parents and students may have turned towards online tutoring instead of the traditional face-to-face tutoring ever since COVID-19 takes the world by storm.

Others might remain skeptical about having online tutoring.

I can understand why.

Especially when it is a new and an unfamiliar experience.

Yet, it is extremely common for parents to be looking out for online tuition service during this pandemic, specifically – online Chinese tuition or online Maths tuition.

Having already conducted more than 100 online tutoring lessons since circuit-breaker started, let me share my observations and address some of the concerns.

Online Tuition Platforms

Online tuition platforms such as Google Meet, Zoom, WebEx and Teamviewer are already in place with enhanced security safeguards.

My students and I have been using Zoom with password enabled and have not encountered any issue thus far.

These platforms allow for simultaneous 2-way audio, video conferencing and screen-share.

Since some of my students have soft-copy notes, especially IB students, they can share their screen and I can annotate directly on their notes.

Being digital, students can just screen-shot and save my writing easily.

Furthermore, even before the imposed of circuit-breaker, students have been sending me questions through WhatsApp.

Therefore, it is not at all difficult for them to transit to online learning.

Effectiveness of Online Tuition

Online tuition remains as effective as face-to-face tuition provided tutors and students play their part in making the lessons a fruitful one.

If students do not prepare their queries and complete their assigned homework, or tutors do not mark the completed work before lessons, even the effectiveness of face-to-face lessons may be less than ideal.

For my case, online tuition assignments can be easily sent over the emails and marked prior to the conduct of lessons.

I’m simply glad that my students have been using lesson time effectively to go through and clarify on the questions they have attempted wrongly.

Technological Issues

Expect minor technological issues that may occur when bandwidth becomes saturated with multiple users.

But given we are in 2020 – already 20% into the 21st century, connection speeds have vastly improved over the decade.

So far I have only encountered an instance when my student’s Wi-Fi was down due to Starhub’s network issue.

We promptly resolved this minor hiccup by tethering using my phone’s 4G connection.

Online Tuition App

There are several online tuition apps available such as Cudy, Tutopiya connecting tutors to students.

However, so long as students are able to match with a tutor that can help them improve their grades, it doesn’t really matter what application is being used.

This is The Future

Whether we warm up to the idea of online tuition, it is here to stay and will only become more dominant.

MOE is going digital and even learning in National Service has went digital visit here.