A guide to conducting a perfect online maths tuition session
Free online math tuition has become famous for its effectiveness in enabling students to develop mathematical skills at a rapid speed in a short period of time. Particularly this pandemic has caused everything to shift to the online platform and this is the prime reason why most students now prefer online tuition over traditional classroom settings.
This brings us to the question as to what kind of skills online math tutors should possess and what kind of strategies they could use to conduct an effective lesson.
So, here are some things that tutors can do!
Firstly, a good math tutor should be able to assess their student’s strengths and weaknesses properly and adapt their teaching style according to it. It will be difficult for tutors to teach their students properly if they underestimate or overestimate the student’s skill level.
Thus, math tutoring centres make sure that students are given an assessment test at the start so that they are able to gauge the skill level of the student accurately.
Source: resources.workable
However, this is usually not enough. Tutors should also have a realistic goal in mind for their students. Many teachers make the mistake of aiming too high and cause too much stress for their students. Being able to judge a student’s ability and the end goal is thus, very important for all math tutors.
Secondly, Mathematics is a very confusing and difficult subject for some students and they may struggle a lot when learning a new concept. They may feel frustrated and stressed and it is up to tutors to alleviate this. Tutors have to give their students moral support and be able to calm them down in those situations.
Moreover, tutors should also be patient with their students when they are unable to do questions, do their homework, or understand what they are saying. Most students are already putting in a lot of effort and tutors should be patient with them.
Source: jimbaston
If they are unable to do homework because they are busy, tutors should give them an extension. If they are unable to turn up for lessons, just arrange a makeup lesson. Knowing that their tutor will be patient with them will help to reduce the stress levels of the student and motivate them to do better.
Thirdly, due to lessons being online, tutors must learn to be flexible in their lesson timings. For one-to-one tuition, tutors have to travel to where their student lives or vice versa but this travel time is not a problem for online lessons.
Thus, most students that choose online tuition want this flexibility in the timing of their lessons. Thus, tutors who are much stricter in what time the lesson is supposed to be will probably have a lower chance of being hired. Teachers must also prepare to be available more often.
Photo by Julia M Cameron
For face-to-face lessons, students will usually save their questions until their next lesson. Online tutoring, however, provides students the liberty to ask questions through online platforms whenever they are in doubt.
Fourthly, this tip applies to online tutors in general. Every online tutor has to be sufficiently knowledgeable in technology. On top of being able to set up a lesson properly in their respective platforms, they must also be able to resolve any technical problems that occur during their lessons.
This is extremely important for issues that may impact the lesson such as audio quality issues, video quality issues, connection issues, etc. Tutors can prepare for such events by learning common problems that can occur on the platform that they are using and learn how to solve them efficiently.
Fifthly, tutors should encourage their students to use online tools to help assist in their learning. It is difficult for tutors to set up online tools and ask students to use them for face-to-face lessons. However, online tutors can do this easily and thus it is important to use this to their advantage.
Source: braveintheattempt
During lessons, tutors can use tools such as desmons, matlab, geogebra to help students visualise and understand concepts easier. Not only will this make lessons much more interesting and fun, it will also make it much more efficient as these tools will be very handy.