How Does Online Tutoring Works: A Comprehensive Guide

Virtual whiteboards, live one-to-one video chats, collaborative tools, and gamification all sound synonymous now. Well, this is one of the myriad transformative powers of online learning. With a projected revenue of $58.45 billion in 2024, the online learning platform has evolved as a powerful tool and is often compared with in-person tutoring. 

If you’re an aspiring online tutor or a parent, you might be curious about how online tutoring works! In this blog, you’ll learn everything from the basics of online tutoring to the key models and aspects that add to the narrative!

So, are you ready for a deep dive into the dynamics of online tutoring?

What is Online Tutoring?

Online tutoring is a virtual learning method where tutors and students interact through online video chat or conferencing tools. The tutoring sessions could be one-to-one or group sessions on a specific subject or targeted coaching like test-preparation.

With shifting learning needs and technology, online tutoring is growing exponentially. Despite its increasing significance, it’s typically not meant to replace traditional classrooms. In fact, it works as a great tool to complement and fill in the learning gaps in traditional classrooms.

For example, a K-12 science tutor can offer extra help with completing science projects or completing homework.

Benefits of Online Tutoring

Online tutoring has significant advantages over traditional learning. Let’s examine the benefits of online tutoring that make it a popular choice!

Flexibility

Undeniably, online tutoring offers more flexibility than traditional classroom learning. Tutors and students can choose their tutoring sessions at their convenience. They can choose a convenient schedule, cost, or tutoring for only specific subjects.

Cost-effective

Yes, online tutoring is more affordable than classroom learning. Lower overhead costs from renting or travel make online tutoring affordable.

Accessibility

Online tutoring reduces issues caused by geographical or traveling constraints. All you need is a powerful internet connection and a compatible learning device. This way, even students in rural areas can leverage the benefits of online learning.

Access to Global Audience

Unlike traditional learning, which restrains learning within the classroom, online learning opens access to a wider global audience.

Personalized Support

One-to-one tutoring sessions, customized tutoring plans, assessments, and feedback offer students a personalized experience. They can avail of tutoring services specific to their needs and preferences.

How Online Tutoring Works?

Online tutoring offers flexibility and real-life interactivity to learning, which is immensely beneficial to students seeking additional support. However, the way the online tutoring service works depends on factors like student’s age, needs, and tutoring model employed. 

However, tutoring sessions occur a fixed number of times a week and are typically one or two hours long.

Factors like tutoring style, format, tools and assignments diversify the overall experience of how online tutoring works! 

Typically, tutoring is considered to be for students with low grades who need additional support to boost their performance. However, online tutoring is a valuable tool in different scenarios as well!

Here are a few other cases where online tutoring works:

• A working professional who wants to learn German for career advancement or transition.
• A student in a rural area who wants to learn a new language.
• A student who is preparing for the GRE and wants to get into an esteemed business school.
• An ADHD student who needs additional help to improve writing and reading skills.

What are the Key Aspects of Online Tutoring?

Despite the varying factors, these common aspects make online tutoring an effective business model.

1. Platform 

An online tutoring platform is the most powerful tool that lays the foundation of your online tutoring system. There are different tutoring platforms, each with its own unique value propositions, functionalities, advantages and even drawbacks.

Whether you’re an aspiring tutor or a curious parent, the first step is understanding your needs. For example, if you’re a language tutor, you can choose to offer your tutoring through Duolingo. On the other hand, if you’re a parent, look for a platform that matches your child’s needs and learning style.

A few popular tutoring platforms are:

• Wyzant: It offers virtual and in-person tutoring across 300+ subjects. Tutors can advertise their services for subjects like Math, Science, English, and Spanish. The platform takes a 25% commission from the tutor’s hourly rate.
• Varsity Tutors: The platform offers group and private tutoring for K-5 subjects like business, humanities, languages, math, etc. Personalization through AI, accessibility, and customized support are the platform’s attractive features.
• Tutor.com: One of the top tutoring platforms for K-12 and college students, professionals, corporate employees, etc., for over 250 subjects. It includes subscriptions and one-time payments. However, the platform follows a rigorous application process for tutors.
• Preply: Another tutoring platform specializing in language tutoring for school, university and test preparation. It also offers tutoring for academic subjects, programming, special education, etc. Speaking about commission, Preply takes full commission for the first lesson from every student and 18-33% commission for every following tutoring session.

Tips for selecting platform tutors and students

2. Software/ Features/ Interactive Tools

In-person tutoring is different from online tutoring, where it is essential to keep your students engaged. Students can easily get bored from the luminescent screens.

Here are the key tools and features to look for an online tutoring platform:

• Digital Whiteboard / virtual whiteboard: Whiteboards make learning more fun and interactive. They have several applications, including screen sharing, auto-recording notes, and delivering a multimedia experience.  They are effective for collaborative learning. Examples of best whiteboard tools are Zoom, lessonSpace, Bramble, Miro, etc

• Content Creation Tools: Content creation and preparing for delivering lessons are essential parts of tutoring. Different tools include visuals, video production, audio recording, and the Microsoft suite. 
• Web-conferencing tools: Popular teaching tools like Zoom, Lessonspace, Skype, Google Meet, etc., help deliver lessons seamlessly.
• Features: Add-ons to create quizzes, polls, live assessments, and gamification modules can make learning more appealing.

3. Scheduling & Appointment Management

Calendar management and an online scheduling software are an important feature of online tutoring systems. This helps tutors schedule sessions according to their availability and create slots. Calendar management syncs the tutors’ calendars with their Zoom or Google Meet accounts. 

When a student books an appointment with a tutor, a session link is generated and sent to the tutor and student’s email. 

4. Payment Integration

Payment Gateways are surely a key aspect of online tutoring platforms. Popular online tutoring platforms support trusted payment gateways to facilitate safe and secure platform transactions. Some of the popular payment gateways are Stripe, PayPal, 2Checkout, Authorize.Net, etc.

5. Progress Tracking

Effective learning doesn’t just involve mastering concepts, but monitoring your student’s progress is also essential. Progress tracking is beneficial for both tutors and students. While students can understand their strengths and areas of improvement, tutors come to know if they need to change their learning approach.

To track progress, start by setting learning goals and objectives. Formulate assessments to measure how well your students have grasped concepts. You can also integrate gamification elements like learning badges by rewarding learners for completing mini-tasks.

6. Communication

Imagine online tutoring without any communication. Students cannot raise their concerns or doubts with tutors and the latter cannot give any feedback on performance. The lack of face-to-face interaction makes communication all the more essential for online tutoring.

That said, there are two forms of communication tools: synchronous(where the communication happens simultaneously) and asynchronous(where the communication doesn’t occur simultaneously).

We discussed the asynchronous, i.e., video conferencing tools earlier. Let’s look into asynchronous forms of communication to complement learning.

• Email: Emails are typically used for sending reminders, weekly updates, or urgent communication, such as a change in timing.
• Discussion boards: Communities foster meaningful communication and enrich the learning experience. Both students and teachers can initiate a discussion on a common topic, which can even become a threaded discussion. Canvas, Piazza, and Padlet are a few discussion boards.
• Chat Messaging: Chat messaging is becoming crucial to the online learning environment. Whether real-time chat during sessions, chat-based tutoring to get feedback, or group chats among your peers, chats are indispensable. While video conferencing helps you deliver lessons effectively, you can use their private chats to ask questions or doubts.

• Social Media: Word-of-mouth and social media share a distinctive connection. Tutors share testimonials, blogs, practical tips and resources through social media. Moreover, students and tutors can communicate even after completing their tutoring sessions.

What are the Types of Tutoring Models?

Now that you are well-acquainted with the essential aspects of online tutoring let’s move on to the business model.

One-to-One Tutoring

In one-to-one tutoring, a private tutor provides tutoring services to a single student through an online platform. Here, tutors offer personalized tutoring based on the learner’s needs and preferences. 

Language learning, math tutoring, academic subject tutoring, and test preparation are applications of one-to-one tutoring. 

Benefits:

• Individualized learning
• Flexible Scheduling
• Personalized Learning
• Immediate Feedback

Examples: Verbling, TutorMe.com, Skooli, Wyzant, Tutor.com

Group Tutoring

While one-to-one tutoring focuses on offering a personalized learning experience, group tutoring creates a collaborative environment. Here, the tutor teaches the same topic to multiple students. In fact, research states that small group tutoring, where ideally one tutor caters to two students, is a great way to boost learning. 

Study groups, class supplementary programs, and skill-building are implementations of group tutoring.

Benefits:

• Better Tutor time management
• Peer-to-peer collaboration opportunities 
• Increased revenue opportunities as caters to more learners

Examples: VarsityTutors, TakeLessons, Preply

Online School/ Academy-Business Model

The academy learning model involves providing educational services to K-12 students. Here, tutors deliver personalized tutoring sessions on specific subjects depending on the learner’s needs. The platform can offer services to varying grades and levels. Like other tutoring models, the platform cuts a fixed commission, and the remaining goes to the tutors.

The model can further vary based on payment structure, core services, revenue streams, target market, etc.

Benefits:

• Tailored learning experiences catering to student needs, preferences, and goals.
• Students gain a holistic view and can relate to interdisciplinary subjects.
• It provides recurring revenue potential as learners enroll for longer periods.
• Opens up opportunities for additional programs like summer camps, internships, certifications, etc.

Examples: K-12, Bridgeway Academy

Self-paced tutoring with AI 

Have you ever had a cozy chat with Khamingo or Duolingo’s Lily? Yes, they both are AI-powered tutors that offer a great personalized learning experience. Khamingo is Khan Academy’s personalized AI tutor that offers access to a world-class content library. It offers personalized tutoring, blends well with learning content and videos and provides customized tone preferences, etc.

Benefits:

• Independent Learning
• Available 24×7
• Budget-friendly pricing

Examples:Khan Academy (Khamingo), Duolingo (Duolingo Max)

Successful Examples of Online Tutoring Platforms 

Next, let’s gain a clearer understanding of how online tutoring works from these industry leaders!

Preply

Preply is a leading online tutoring marketplace and needs no introduction. With 44,000 experienced tutors and over 120 languages, Preply is a popular platform among tutors and students. Although the platform primarily focuses on language learning, it also offers tutoring for other subjects and skills. 

It is popular for language-specific tutoring among colleges, schools, universities, and TOEFL and IELTS students.

The platform offers both one-to-one and group tutoring. It matches students with tutors based on their preferences using a special AI algorithm. Like the majority of learning platforms, it adopts a commission model depending on the hours spent tutoring on the platform. The commission percentage ranges from 33% to 18%.

An intuitive and user-friendly interface, robust pricing model, language expertise, and flexible packages and discounts make it a popular choice!

Wyzant

Another popular tutoring platform, Wyzant, allows users to connect with independent tutors for about 300+ subjects, academic courses and skills. It provides both online and in-person tutoring services. Students can search for their required subjects in the toolbar, and the platform displays a list of matching tutors. Later, they can filter by tutoring rates, availability and reviews.

The platform doesn’t offer a trial. But if you are not satisfied with your first lesson, the “Good Fit Guarantee” policy offers a free session until you find the right tutor. Wyzant welcomes tutors from different backgrounds, such as universities, certified teachers, industry professionals, and graduate and undergraduate teachers. 

Speaking about the commission, the platform takes a 25% sales cut and pays the tutors 75% of their earnings. Plus, there are no platform listings, and tutors can earn around $35-$60/hour.

Conclusion

Online tutoring has several benefits over the traditional tutoring models. Flexibility and accessibility being the most prominent ones. Whether you’re an online tutor or a parent, choose an online tutoring platform that caters to the student’s learning style and offers a secure environment for learning.

So, hope you find success with finding the right online learning platform!

FAQ-Related to How Online Tutoring Works: A Comprehensive Guide

1. What do you need for creating an online tutoring setup?

Online tutoring works with the following essential virtual setup:

• A reliable computer
• A stable internet connection
• A good-quality webcam and microphone

2. How does online tutoring work?

Online tutoring involves a virtual learning environment where tutors and students connect via video chat or conferencing. Tutors can offer one-to-one or group tutoring services on a specific topic or skill. Its essential aspects include an online learning platform, calendar management, payment gateway, and interactive tools.

3. Do online tutors make money?

Yes, online tutoring is a profitable business. Tutors can earn between $100 and $10,000 per month. Your overall earnings depend on your experience, niche, location, student level and teaching method.

4. Can I start my own online tutoring business?

Yes, you can definitely start your own online tutoring platform. You need to decide on a lucrative niche, have a minimal tutoring setup, choose an appropriate platform and decide on appropriate tutoring prices.