Is online tuition as good as face-to-face tuition? It is certainly a little different, but it is in no way inferior providing everybody has the right equipment and you use the best online whiteboard, like I do! There are some key advantages to working online, for both of us. These are:

  • More timeslots that work well for both the tutor and tutee
  • The work we do is automatically saved and can be viewed again after the lesson, so you won’t need to choose between participation and making notes
  • You can replay solutions to problems from the start (the whiteboard records all the actions we take, so you can undo and redo every change to the page)
  • Instant access to a large library of questions, worksheets and other materials that it would be impossible to carry around or print
  • Most importantly, I can focus completely on being a Chemistry tutor. If I only served local students I would have to offer more subjects. Whilst I could do that, I think it is better to be great at teaching one thing than merely good at several others. I will let you decide whether it is better to hire a jack-of-all trades or someone with a deep specialisation, but I chose to be the latter.

Since the start of the pandemic, which also means since the day everybody upgraded their internet connections to optical fibre, I have completed over two thousand hours of online tutoring and have developed question sets and materials specifically for effective online tuition. I have taught students from Paris to Prague, Spain to Switzerland, Bangladesh to Birmingham all using the same online platform, Bitpaper. Each year I have A-level students who achieve the highest grades (A* and grade 9) through tuition that is exclusively online. Whether you are looking for help with your international GCSE or A-levels, or if you need a tutor who covers AQA, Edexcel or OCR test specifications, I can help, so please get in touch.

There is some guidance below on the minimum requirements to make the tutorials effective online.

Equipment for online tuition

I use a graphics tablet for writing on screen.

For the sessions to work well you will also require a stylus or graphics tablet. An iPad will be fine, but mobile phones won’t work with the whiteboard because the screen is too small!. The whiteboard works with Chrome or Safari webbrowsers only and you need a stable, high-speed internet connection. The recommended minimum speed is 20 Mbps download speed and 5 Mbps upload speed.

If you are still unsure if online tuition is right for you, I can arrange a free webchat to discuss what works well and how I can help you with your goals. Even if you have had a bad experience with online tuition from school or elsewhere, my tuition is much more targeted and personal, so you will make better progress with your Chemistry than you have done so far. And private tuition is usually more enjoyable for the student, better not forget that one!

Teaching online requires more preparation than tuition in person (for me, not you), so payment for online sessions must be in advance of the session. The rates are the same as for one-to-one tuition, you can view them here.

For more information or to enquire about online tuition, please email me Dr Andrew Roberts.