Dive Brief:
- Today’s students are used to accessing content whenever they want it, including for education, but institutions must consider what responsibilities they have when teachers are off-duty.
- Peter West, director of learning at St. Stephen’s College in Australia, writes for eCampus News that his institution has contracted an online tutoring service to provide embedded support in educational materials.
- When students log into the online learning environment, each course features a link to live tutors, who, much like teachers, help guide students through the problem rather than simply giving answers.
Dive Insight:
Many faculty members make themselves available to students outside of normal working hours. The question is whether they should have to. Particularly for institutions that rely on adjunct lecturers who are paid by the course or the credit hour, administrators might consider investing in a service that provides quality support to students when instructors are off-duty. The challenge would be ensuring that the tutoring is high quality and embedding the service into a learning management system for seamless support.