What is Online Tutoring?

This handbook will present an overview of online tutoring in its many guises. It can be synchronous or asynchronous, solitary or in groups, using chat rooms, whiteboards, e-mails, video conferencing, tutorials in the form of drills and skills, and discussion boards. A variety of college and university sanctioned platforms can deliver chatrooms, discussion boards, whiteboards, live presentation tools and e-mails in secure arenas. These include BlackBoard, WebCT, eCollege, NetTutor, Horizon Live and Macromedia BreezeLive Online tutoring which can be sponsored completely by a college or university or it can be provided by commercial corporations such as SMARTHINKING and textbook publishers or by any number of individuals who offer tutoring through Internet online tutoring services.

Directors need to consider these three questions.

  -- What is ideal?

  -- What technologies are available?

  -- What is affordable?

Our goal is for directors to be able to answer the first question for his/her own program after reviewing the answers to the second two questions, which will hold the defining factors.

The second section of the handbook has been created for the tutors themselves, providing guidelines for tutoring online, most often without “seeing the whites of their tutees’ eyes.” It also gives a reference to accepted Netiquette for Internet communication.

A web version of this Online Tutoring Handbook & Guide can be found at http://wind.caspercollege.edu/~springer/handbook/Index.html. It can also be reached through the Casper College Peer Tutor Program Home Page at http://www.caspercollege.edu. Click on A-Z index, find Peer Tutor Program under "P." Scroll to Online Tutoring Handbook & Guide at the bottom of the page.