Education, Online Tutoring - What it is not


by JAGBANDHU PANDA - Date: 2008-08-24 - Word Count: 811 Share This!

One of the more significant uses that the internet is being put to use to is to help students in different countries with the help of tutors elsewhere.

To give an example, a student of UK or American School, may need help in understanding a subject or subjects, even to do his homework, or prepare for class or board level examinations.

The costs involved in tuitions are high, range as they do from $ 40 to even $ 60. Moreover, these are per hour rates, and it has been found that most of the tuition goes waste, as the student and the tutor often times lose interest, or sometimes the student goes missing or finds an excuse to avoid teaching. Further being taught by a teacher who is familiar, the inter-action between the two does not lead to good results, surprisingly. It should be the other way around.

With the advent of the internet, things have changed. Today, you can find a tutor for any subject elsewhere in the world, who knows the syllabus of the countries they prefer to deal in, and more importantly are conversant with the teaching style, and the manner in which a subject is taught.

It is a pity that in some schools, the emphasis is more on discipline or sports, or both, and the resultant sufferer is a student, who does want to study. There are enough reports in newspapers and other journals that schools in the developed countries have generally declined in offering quality education, despite high costs of education.

The internet launched a revolution in education when tutors came on line. These tutors, for a fee, help students online, using webcams, virtual screen blackboards and also PC to PC phone calling systems.

A great many of them have mushroomed today, and their number is growing steadily. There are a number of very good sites, some providing tuitions on all subjects, based on their tutor banks, and some specialize only in one or two subjects.

All this is to the good.

What is NOT good is that there are tutors' sites to which the student can submit a topic and have a précis or an essay or an article written for a fee! This is certainly not the kind of tutoring that one would like to have. Let us be clear: writing an essay, précis or a note is not something that tutors should be doing. Rather, they should be helping the student who contacts them with points, what has been written and point out where the mistakes lie and how they can be corrected. But some of the lesser known tutors on the internet do write it out for you. And all the student has to do is to blandly hand it over to the class teacher the next day.

What is the cost of such practice? If you read any journal dealing with education, it has been found that most English and American students cannot even spell simple words, although it is their native language. Worse, they cannot claim to have been brought up in a non-English speaking country. One report has it that the right usage of English is to be found in earlier English dominated countries, such as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Singapore and so on. In following this practice, who loses? The student obviously. Not only do they end up uneducated, but also lose the ability and agility to learn something, which is what education is all about.

Therefore when you are looking for an online tutor, look for this kind of practice being offered by the online tutor. It is one thing to offer to help with the essay, précis, or whatever, and yet another to have it written for you. Agreed, in some subjects, the outlines prepared by the student may be unclear or off the objective, but to rewrite for the student is simply put making him lazy, inefficient (because the student does not learn), and indeed, I would say illiterate. Illiterate because by writing his essay for him, you are depriving that person from learning the language, its grammar and its usage. How can you then expect a rise in educational standards?

There are many sites which discourage this practice. For example, www.transwebtutors.com which consists of a group of tutors in India, does not entertain such requests, except those that are required at a very high level; further they only provide outlines, on which the student has to build his formulations.

Teaching is helping people to learn, and tutoring is to help understand, and not standing in for the student!

Can you imagine what would be the fate of those students who got their assignments written by someone else in a professional manner, and they are confronted with a similar question in their School or Board exam?

I leave that for the reader to decide.


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