A Guide to Online Tutoring: Best Platform and Resources

Online tutoring can be a great way to help students who are looking for individualized support outside the classroom. It’s personalized, convenient, and often extremely rewarding, but is it a practical business idea?

In short, yes. Tutoring remotely can be easy, scalable, and profitable if you have the right approach. This guide will show you how to run digital sessions from anywhere with an internet connection, with helpful templates to get you started.

Before you continue, why not work along with Quenza, our user-friendly online tutoring platform? Our professional trial gives you $1 access to all Quenza’s tools for the first month, giving you a simple, stress-free way to design and deliver your online tutoring sessions from anywhere.

How To Perform Online Tutoring Classes

If you have specialized knowledge of a specific subject area, online tutoring is a straightforward and often very fulfilling way to support students using blended learning.

If you have specialized knowledge of a specific subject area, online tutoring is a straightforward and often very fulfilling way to support students using blended learning.

It can be a convenient, scalable way to supplement your income, and even a highly interactive way to teach individuals, classes, and entire curricula.

There are few ways to start an online tutoring business from home, but broadly, it involves the following steps:[1]

• Establishing what subject areas you’d like to tutor in
• Determining who your target students are, e.g. their learning level, what they’re studying for
• Deciding what modality to use – i.e. whether you’ll offer online tutoring only or a blended approach of e-courses and face-to-face sessions
• Assembling your tools and equipment; for virtual classes, this will involve researching online tutoring platforms, webcams, and a quiet spot from which to hold your classes
• Setting the pricing and policies for your services
• Crafting a business plan – this will outline your vision, mission, and strategy
• Deciding on how you’ll market and grow your business.

Best App and Software For Tutoring

Online tutoring can be done in a range of ways, such as through video classes or meeting software.

Most commonly, however, it takes place using professional online learning software such as Quenza, which features purpose-built tools for lessons, activities, and curriculum content, as shown below.

E-learning software is specifically designed to help you plan, curate, and deliver blended learning solutions, making online tutoring much more organized and effective.

With Quenza’s professional toolkit, you have everything you need to build and run an online tutoring business easily from home without juggling various apps. Rather, everything you need comes in one convenient Dashboard, including tools for student intake, homework, and automating your pupils’ learning on a schedule.

7 Tools Included In the Quenza Platform

Quenza helps you create a sophisticated, interactive context for e-learning using some uniquely customizable tools.

For online tutoring specifically, these essentials include:

1. An Activity Builder for designing learning resources like worksheets, lessons, learning modules, assessments, and homework
2. Pathway Tools for assembling your content into lesson plans, curricula, or courses
3. A free Expansion Library containing customizable digital templates for all your exercises and content (e.g. quizzes, metaphors, and videos)
4. A mobile-compatible Quenza App for students to use as a Learning Portal, where they can receive your materials and communicate securely with you in real-time
5. Client Profiles where you can get an overview of your students’ activity progress, send them reminders/notifications to complete their tasks, and make learning notes from your sessions together
6. Quenza Chat, for answering questions from individual students or groups and classes that you tutor, and
7. Live results tracking, for collecting learners’ results and responses in real-time.

Scheduling with Quenza Software

Flexibility is one of the biggest advantages of choosing to tutor, and your sessions may take place outside of school hours at a time that you agree on with your pupils.

You may start with several regular weekly sessions, for instance, or meet with students when they need you before exams, assessments, or after class.

However you decide to interact with your learners, Quenza helps you share your content in the way that you find most strategic. You can:

• Deliver materials as soon as you create them
• Automatically share content when your students finish one stage, or
• Plan a course out step-by-step, setting custom intervals between each stage to spread out your curriculum.

7 Helpful Templates, Games, and Resources For Tutors

Quenza also contains a host of useful templates, or Expansions, that you can use to save time when designing your lesson plans.

You can easily customize these to introduce your own frameworks or apply your unique technique, and all of your Expansions can be branded with your business logo for a quick, easy professional finish:

The following list includes a few versatile starting points for putting together your first course or curriculum:

1. Goal Visualization: This exercise can be used by students who need a little motivation to achieve their academic goals. Using this mental imagery technique, they can start planning their approach and problem-solving when obstacles arise.
2. 20 Guidelines for Developing a Growth Mindset: Here’s a lesson that helps students explore a healthy mentality for learning, by introducing the key characteristics of a growth mindset.
3. Self Contract: Learners can set their own development goals and commit to them with this Self Contract. With this exercise, they can identify positive actions related to their study and build accountability for accomplishing them.

On the business side of things, these templates can help you onboard new students without designing forms of your own:

1. This Pre-Coaching Questionnaire can easily be retitled and repurposed into a Pre-Tutoring Questionnaire
2. Session Notes for Clients is an adaptable template for your students to take notes, and
   
3. The Effectiveness of Session Evaluation can also be modified to create a bespoke feedback form for your online tutoring sessions.

Crafting A Business Plan: An Example and Template

Needless to say, starting an online tutoring business is as much about starting a business as it is about tutoring: you’ll need a plan to make sure it goes right.

If you’re looking for helpful business plan examples and templates, you can find a step-by-step guide in this resource: How To Start An Online Coaching Business: Step-By-Step Plan.

This How-To will help you:

• Establish the ‘why,’ ‘how,’ and what of your online tutoring practice
• Build a roadmap for your business
• Differentiate your approach to stand out from other tutors
• Design, collate, and organize your session materials into a valuable curriculum
• Monitor your students’ performance, progress, and improvements over time, and
• Personalize your tutoring programs to suit your clients’ goals and learning styles.

15 Interview Questions To Prepare For

Preparing for your students’ questions is important – it gives you a chance to show off your expertise and demonstrates your suitability as a tutor.

Here are a few sample interview questions so that you can be prepared for interviews with potential new students, from the career experts at Indeed:[2]

1. Why do you want to be an online tutor?
2. When are you available for sessions?
3. Are you planning a professional career in teaching?
4. How long have you been tutoring?
5. What are your areas of expertise?
6. What qualifications, degrees, or diplomas do you have in X subject area?
7. What are your strengths and weaknesses as a tutor?
8. What age group/grade level do you have the most experience with?
9. How have you helped other students to prepare/learn/succeed?
10. What results have your other students achieved?
11. What was the biggest challenge you’ve overcome as a tutor?
12. How can you know if a student understands a concept/lesson?
13. How do you keep your students engaged in their learning?
14. How do you structure your lessons and materials?
15. How do you stay on track during timed sessions?

6 Tips For Your Virtual Tutoring Practice

Ready to tutor your first client?

These tips can help you make most of your resources and the Quenza platform, while creating student-focused curricula that maximize engagement:[3]

1. Get input for your programs – Use established curricula or learning frameworks to get an overview of what your lessons should cover. Is your student preparing for a certain exam? Check the most commonly asked questions and key topics.
2. Ask other stakeholders for recommendations – E.g. you might get weigh-in from a student’s parents, or reach out to students, teachers, or fellow tutors and get feedback on what could make your course more interesting, informative, and effective.
3. Build a scalable program from the start – You can easily save tutoring programs as Pathway templates using Quenza, then build on these with additional homework, lessons, or resources as you gain more experience.
4. Remember that your students are unique – Keep their individual needs, priorities, and learning levels in mind when making decisions about your materials and programs.
5. Measure your students’ progress – Tracking your students’ performance over time will give you insight into how where they need special attention, and allow you to tweak your programs accordingly.
6. Collect data, assess, and refine your services – Get feedback from your students themselves so you can improve your solutions (Quenza’s Expansion Library is full of useful tools for this, such as the adaptable Coach Evaluation Form). How could you improve their motivation, encourage collaboration, or enhance your approach to instruction?

Final Thoughts

Online tutoring opens up all kinds of opportunities for students and tutors, from blended learning programs to distance learning and supplemental help with homework.

With this guide, you can create your first solution by exploring video, multimedia, and engagement – soon, you’ll discover what works best for you and your learners. If you’re looking for exercises and activities to include in your programs, don’t forget to check out the rest of our blog for more resources. Happy tutoring!

We hope you enjoyed this guide. To kick start your online tutoring business and deliver engaging lessons from anywhere, don’t forget to start with Quenza for $1.

With unlimited access to Quenza’s online learning tools, you’ll be able to share engaging, unique, and valuable tutoring solutions easily with your students, and run your digital business from anywhere with an internet connection.

References