Understanding online tutoring as career

Ranjan K Baruah *

We have seen the impact of the recent pandemic and young people have become more confused. Many have lost their jobs and there are no new openings except a few limited opportunities. Many entry level professionals ask me what they can do as they had just started work but due to lock down and pandemic things have stopped for them.

The confusion is more with aspirants who got good marks in their university exams and aspiring to be teacher or Professor in near future. In today's edition, let us explore something for those who are educated and qualified and eager to do something digitally for their livelihoods. We are going to discuss online tutoring as one of the career options.

Initially it is important for us to understand online tutoring. It is the process of tutoring in an online, virtual, or networked environment, in which teachers or tutors and learners participate from separate geographical locations. It is practiced using many different approaches for distinct sets of users.

The distinctions are in content and user interface, as well as in tutoring styles and tutor-training methodologies. We have seen the growth of many online tutoring platforms due to lock down recently as schools and colleges are closed and students are staying inside homes.

An institution or individual may offer online tutoring through an internal or external tutoring website or through a Learning Management Systems. Online environments applied in education could also involve the use of a virtual learning environment platform such as Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, etc. Some of these are paid systems but some are free and open source.

Online tutoring may be offered either via a link in an LMS, or directly through the tutoring service's platform, where the subscriber may be required to pay for tutoring time before the delivery of service.

Tutoring may take the form of a group of learners simultaneously logged in online, then receiving instruction from a single tutor, also known as rnany-to-one tutoring and live online tutoring. It may be one to one or like customized tutoring.

Another form of tutoring, called peer tutoring connects peers, such as recent or fellow students within a course or subject, tutoring each other,. and this may also be conducted as online tutoring over an online conferencing interface.

There are many challenges as well as opportunities to be a successful online tutor. We must be aware that from the very beginning of online tutoring, controversy surrounded several concerns voiced by educators and parents.

It means anyone who wants to be successful and sustain as an online tutor must have a good strategy to be successful. Now the question is can someone with good academic records or someone who used to teach become a successful online tutor.

Aspirants must know that apart from knowledge of the subjects they must be technologically advanced because unlike traditional face-to-face tutoring. There are few doubts or questions when it comes to online tutoring which includes how one does know about the tutor and his or her qualifications.