Online Tutoring
Mackie Dougherty '03 is the founder and president of Harvard Online Tutoring, a new community service organization that links the academic firepower of Harvard students to the questions and conundrums of Boston high school students. (Harvard University Gazzette Staff photo by Jon Chase)
Sometimes "spam" really contains "steak" (or perhaps, otoro). Last week I received a blanket email about a tool to create an "online tutoring environment." The leading lines from a AskOnline caught my attention :
We build online tutoring centers for colleges and universities where your students will work with YOUR tutors. Harvard, Duke and Berkeley College are already realizing the benefits of giving students access to tutors over the internet.
The mention of Harvard, Duke, and Berkeley sent me to google - what are these guys up to. The first links were to an article in the Harvard Gazette on the Harvard Online Tutoring program; a visit to the AskOnline About page shows that this product is the commercialization of the Harvard student program. Another Facebook?
Academically, the system seems fairly mature ...
[The] online tutoring center [offers] a wide variety of tools, including whiteboard technology, to help students and tutors communicate while tutoring writing, math or any other subject. There are also asynchronous tools that students can use to ask questions or search for previous sessions when no tutors are available to help them. For administrators [it offers] extensive tracking and reporting tools that allow you to log contact hours and even look at transcripts of tutoring sessions.
The original program at Harvard was a tutoring service offered for Boston area high school students and was coordinated with the Boston Public Library (and possibly other partners). There is a nice set of administrative, mentoring, and monitoring services built into the package.
AskOnline wants you to use your own tutors. We feel that it is very important that you know exactly who is communicating with your students. We offer a solution that allows you to choose your own staff of tutors. It is absolutely vital that you have the ability to teach the material the way you think it should be taught. Another benefit of this model is the freedom to set tutors' wages, which makes AskOnline the most cost-effective solution on the market.
Notes:
Beth Potier, Online tutoring connects: For high-schoolers, Harvard students make a difference without having to make a trip. Harvard Gazette, February 07, 2002. http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/02.07/18-tutoring.html.