A Parent's Perspectiveon Online Math Tutoring

Online, April 18, 2013 (Newswire.com) - As part of an ongoing survey to gather customer feedback on Learning Scholar's online Math tutoring, I talked to a parent today. The mother of a fifth grader and seventh grader, Mrs.Vish was happy to share why her daughters cannot wait for the next online Math tutoring session.

"They are in awe of their online Math tutor at Learning Scholars, Ms.Sunita. She is knowledgeable and very friendly. Her master's degree in Math and experience in teaching translate into quality learning time for my kids," said the mother.

In the beginning, Mrs. Vish was apprehensive about enrolling her children in the online Math tutoring classes. Will the kids become frustratedby ambiguous directions from online tutors that they have never met? How do they deal with crashed systems, slow connections, and other unpredictable problems that haunt cyberspace? She was especially anxious about the younger daughter as the fifth grader was an intelligent child with an extremely short attention span and an active mind that gets bored and distracted quite easily.

Her doubts were soon put to rest when the Learning Scholars' math tutoring sessions finally began. Both the students attended the online tutoring sessions enthusiastically. There were no technical glitches from either side.

"I would say that my kids enjoy the online Math tutoring sessions way more than the face-to-face tuitions they attended last year. Maybe it's the different activities that they are engaged in during the tutoring that kept their interest up: the shared whiteboard, voice chat, instant messenger, video chat. It is fun learning," piped the mother.

Mrs. Vish is conveying a very compelling point here about online tutoring: Today's students have a positive attitude towards the Internet and internet-enabled technologies. To maximize the learning potential of students, it is pivotal to take into account students' enthusiasm and familiarity towardsweb-based environments and online learning.

to profoundly influence student attitudes towards computers and their performances in a technology-centered classroom (Lowe, Krahn, and Sosteric, 2003, Influence of socioeconomic status and gender on high school seniors' use of computers at home and at school, Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 49[2], 138-54).