Online Tutoring - Background and Definitions

Background and Definitions

Online environments applied in education usually involve the use of learning management systems or Virtual Learning Environments such as Moodle, Sakai, WebCT, Blackboard. Online tutoring may be offered either directly through the virtual learning environment of a tutoring service or via a link in a learning management system. In the first case, the learner or his or her parents may be required to pay for tutoring time before the delivery of service, whereas many educational institutions and major textbook publishers sponsor a certain amount of tutoring without a direct charge to the learner.

The tutoring may take the form of a group of learners simultaneously logged in and receiving instruction from a single tutor, also known as many-to-one tutoring. This is often known as e-moderation, defined as the facilitation of the achievement of goals of independent learning, learner autonomy, self-reflection, knowledge construction, collaborative or group-based learning, online discussion, transformative learning and communities of practice. These functions of moderation are based on constructivist or social-constructivist principles of learning.

Another form of tutoring, called peer tutoring, involves peers (i.e., fellow-students) within a course or subject tutoring each other, and this may also be conducted as online tutoring over an online conferencing interface.

Most commonly, however, individual learners or their parents either purchase tutoring time with a private vendor of online tutoring service. Such time may also be made available through the purchase of a book, access to a library, a textbook publisher, or enrollment in a particular school or school system. This is known as one-on-one tutoring.

Asynchronous online tutoring is tutoring offered in a format in which the learner submits a question and the tutor responds at a later time. This is appropriate to detailed review of writing, for instance. The learner and the tutor need not be online at the same time.

Synchronous online tutoring involves a shared interface, such that both the tutor and the learner (or a group of learners) are online at the same time. This requires implementation of browser-based software and may or may not require the learner to download proprietary software. Some online tutoring services use telephonic or VOIP communication and even video communication.

There are a number of private firms that provide online tutoring. A third-party online tutoring service offering asynchronous one-on-one tutoring was available as early as 1996.

From the very beginning of online tutoring, controversy surrounded several concerns voiced by educators and parents. Researchers recognised that online tutoring required three components:

1. online tutors adopt a specific pedagogy (educational method), encompassing both instructional and social support or group development;
2. online tutoring management coordinates and organizes the implementation of the service; and
3. unlike traditional face-to-face tutoring, online tutoring requires a usable user interface and technical support to maintain both the hardware and the software sides of the operation.

The questions raised by online tutoring include:

1. How does a parent or teacher know that the online tutor is qualified to give help, as opposed to simply giving answers to the learner?
2. Assuming the online tutor is qualified as an instructor, how does online tutoring relate to course instruction?
3. How reliable is the interface? Will it accommodate the discussion of the tutored material at a comparable level to a traditional classroom setting?

Within higher education, tutoring is considered to be adult-to-adult guidance within a specific course or subject for the clear purpose of advancing learning competence in an area of study. Generally, a tutor is an academic, a lecturer or professor who has responsibility for teaching in a degree/diploma program in a university or vocational teaching and learning setting. Learning centers at post-secondary school campuses may incorporate either e-moderating or one-to-one online tutoring, or both, creating a distance learning program, whether or not the campus or student courses are conducted online. In distance learning, tutors may be recruited specifically for the role of teaching and supporting students through online tutoring. Inheriting the role of the tutor, the online tutor must have excellent online communication skills and the ability to discern learning objectives, and must guide students successfully towards the attainment of those objectives. This form of tutoring may vary from primary instruction to assistance with assigned coursework.