Online tutoring has the potential to reach learners of any age, anywhere in the world, sharing and growing knowledge without boundaries and thereby enhancing learning and educational opportunity. If you’re a tutor and have been thinking about doing online tutoring, here are the reasons why you should make the switch and the benefits you will enjoy!
More flexibility, more rewards
If you’re currently only doing in-person tutoring session, then you should be familiar with this scenario: you’re commuting across the city or driving on busy roads between the typical weekday tutoring hours of 5pm and 9pm, and two sessions is quite a stretch. Furthermore, planning to get all of your sessions in specific regions on particular nights can be a logistical nightmare. One cancellation can throw an entire evening into disarray, particularly in holiday times when schedules need to be flexible and dynamic for students and parents.
Now, tutoring online allows you to maximize your time available for tutoring. You can also extend your hours. You wouldn’t want to turn up to someone’s house on a weekday evening after 9 pm but many students are happy learning online until later in the evening, particularly those nocturnal teenagers.
Reduced commute = increased savings
There are numerous benefits to not having to travel from home-to-home (and sometimes across the city!), particularly during the busy evening rush hour periods when tutors are most active, these include:
- Not turning up late to sessions – Anyone who has tutored in-or-around areas where they are commuting by car has likely experienced this. Rather than turning up to a session calm and ready to teach, you turn up late, stressed and flustered. To make matters worse, this has a knock on effect on the quality of the session you deliver, which is the last thing you want. Particularly when all of this can be avoided through simply removing the need to travel.
- Saving on car mileage and gas costs – In-person tutoring is just not worth it if the commute that’s involved costs you a large chunk of your income. You could save a lot of money by redirecting the majority of your tutoring online.
- Reducing your carbon footprint (every contribution you make to help mitigate the impacts of climate change counts!)
Teach globally
Being able to reach students from the other side of the world means you don’t have to be “location dependent”. Perhaps you live in a rural area, where there isn’t much tutoring demand, but you’re eager to share your knowledge. Or it could be that you or your students are moving away but still want to keep in touch and continue your usual sessions. Or it could be that your mobility is impaired and you have to stay home for a while. And what if you’re occupied by commitments at home, such as taking care of your children? With online tutoring, you’ll no longer be restricted by these factors. Teach the world, from the comforts of your own home!
Tutor Patrick P. certainly loves online tutoring. Read his story here.
You can also create your own working schedule. Relating to the first point, in-person tutoring is typically restricted to a few hours after school finishes. But with online tutoring, you can really take advantage of time-zones and work during the hours which suit you.
Recorded sessions make for professional development
A great feature in the TutorOcean online classroom is session recording. Both you and your students can save the recordings for your own use at a later date. This is an opportunity to completely personalize your students’ learning and revision experience.
Having saved recordings can help you make easier adjustments to your teaching materials and/or lesson plans. Also, you can group the best recordings into a portfolio, so you can present to prospective students!
A recording of your session will not only hold you accountable for your words and actions, but the same applies to the student. This helps everyone to remain professional and decent, and gives younger students’ parents peace of mind.
Last but certainly not least, session recording will help you become a better tutor. It may be a little bit awkward for some people to watch a recording of them, but once you become comfortable, you can thoroughly evaluate your own performance, which simply can’t be done offline (unless you are recording yourself tutoring in a home or classroom, which is rare). The fantastic thing about session recording is that you can look back at them to see what you did well and what you could improve as an educator.
At TutorOcean, we put our users first. For tutors, you enjoy the flexibility to teach when you want and charge as you wish. On top of that, our platform allows you to choose the logistics of your lessons such as date, time, location, and more. Sign up for free as a tutor!
TutorOcean
TutorOcean is a global marketplace where learners and tutors connect. Through its intuitive and integrated online classroom, tutors are able to cultivate the internal motivation and potential of learners, and thus help them achieve their goals. It's a place where the connection is made instantly, knowledge is shared and acquired in real-time, and community is created while breaking geographical boundaries.
