AssignmenthelpNet recently collaborated with WizIQ to deliver a webinar titled “7 Best Practices to Become a Great Online Tutor“. Our blog contributor Urvi delivered this webinar in which she spilled secrets to being a great online tutor, shared her experiences of teaching online and 7 essential tips she swears by for having a successful online tutoring session. The webinar  also discussed about the changing roles of online tutors who have become indispensable to the present day learners’ demographics as well as the great complementary roles of a Face-to-Face teaching and online tutoring model. The webinar presented a thorough discussion on the future opportunities in online tutoring, vis-a-vis Microlearning.

In an earlier interview with WizIQ, Urvi had highlighted the emergence of online tutoring in response to the changing needs of today’s learners as well as changing demographics of today’s classrooms.Close to 1 million students today sign up for online learning based courses in pure or hybrid format. However, even though the enrollment has gone up, more and more learners are opting for one-to-one tutoring format. “This explains that students are increasingly looking for personalized and tailored learning solutions.” This kind of undivided attention, personalisation and adaptability can only be afforded by online tutors, not even by F2F classroom teachers. Infact Urvi stresses, “Online Tutoring is not a means to horizontally displace the traditional classrooms but in fact can effectively become vertically linked to it as well.” She explains how in a flipped classroom format, teachers can team up with online tutors and while online tutors work with students at home, dealing with conceptual explanations and helping students with all the learning work, teachers can utilise the classroom F2F time for problem-based and application-based learning. Also the students come to the class prepared will feel more confident and do not feel the peer pressure of catching up to their fast-learner classmates.

 Students are looking for tutors that can deliver tailored learning experiences to suit every student’s personal learning objectives as well as learning styles and abilities. This can now by aided by the emergence of learning analytics. However, the way online tutoring needs to emerge in order to effectively deliver on its promises of being the personalised, tailored, adaptive and actrion-oriented learning strategy, there are some essential tips that all online tutors need to keep in mind. That’s why the webinar chalks out 7 essential tips that can establish a role for online tutors as distinct from conventional classroom-teachers and yet equally effective.

These seven tips will revolve around

  1. bringing a fresh perspective to learning with new media and technological inputs
  2. assigning learning objectives in an online tutoring space
  3. using appropriately suitable media format for content delivery
  4. provoking responses from learner : Active Online Learning
  5. discussing optimal content length and time for online tutoring
  6. proving that learning took place in an online tutoring setup
  7. leveraging analytics for delivering tailored tutoring solutions

The webinar also focused on the emergence of Microlearning. Recent research shows that in online learning, content length can significantly alter student engagement. Students were found to have watched the complete educational video till the end only if it was 6 minutes or lesser in duration. This is a direct implication of the technology rich environment surrounding today’s learners While the learners are constantly whetted with queries of how, why, when, what; the access to multiple-intelligent sources over the internet makes them impatient. There is a need to create smaller knowledge-rich chunks which can answer the query and is yet not just a 1/9th portion of a 45 minute video. That’s where Microlearning arises.

what is microlearning edtech trend

With microlearning these shorter content-rich nuggets can be “designed recursively in a way such that individual micro-learning targets are fulfilled in tandem with a larger macro-learning target”. Urvi explains “Only such micro-learning content will be amenable to search, access and re-use by learners with all permutations of the micro-learning objectives”.

Finally, the webinar talks about three questions that every online tutor must answer to themselves which will help them to evaluate their overall learning strategy and create learning objectives in tandem with the requirements of their learners:

  • Who are my learners? Their demographic information, their learning objectives, their learning styles and content preference and how they learn best. These learning analytics will help the online tutors to engage and retain learners in an online environment.
  • What kind of learning activity will be most effective for my learners? Remember technology is just a means to deliver an effective learning process and cannot replace the actual role that a teacher or a tutor plays in a learning space. An optimal learning environment should be produced to complement individual differences among learners. No one-size-fits-all approach will be effective with online tutoring.
  • Are there more innovative ways to use IT to make learning more successful? A great online tutor must always strive to inculcate the latest trends in e-learning and education technology in a manner that can make the learning process more active, social, and learner-centred.

The webinar was attended live by over hundreds of online learners. Incase you missed the webinar, there is still a chance for you to register on WizIQs page and view recording of the webinar.