Coronavirus is changing the way we educate and it’s eye-opening

Minerva Tutors, the UK’s leading private tuition agency, reveals some fascinating insights about how coronavirus is affecting the way their tutors are teaching, and what ‘the new normal’ might mean for the world of education.

The following advice is a summary of the minutes taken from a recent tutor training meeting, which included ten highly experienced online tutors.

How to engage with unmotivated students online

Tutors need to:

Ask lots of questions
Make sure they are doing lots of the work and leading the lesson through tasks on the whiteboard
Use interactive resources, keep pupils constantly clicking and reading and typing
Break lesson down into 15 minute or 20 minute chunks
For hyperactive students, make sure they have no more than 40 minute lessons, lots of breaks and again integrate interactive elements for them to click, type, read out

What are the best online resources?

Maths Factor
Sir Linkalot
TwoSeven Chrome Extension – you can watch and study Netflix films and TV together!

Encourage students to keep a journal

Keeping a journal creates a “primary resource”. If they study primary and secondary resources in history, this is fantastic. They can literally start creating history.
Nice to write about your day every day – keeps you sane!
No better time to start journaling, install habits that will last a lifetime

Use Google Docs

For A level and essay writing, live sharing on Google Docs is actually BETTER than face to face. You can see what pupils are writing, and see their thought processes in REAL TIME
Live edit together so you can actually write collaboratively which is a great skill too

Will things go back to normal?

Parents may now be more sympathetic to online learning so more of it will happen
Tutors and parents are craving face to face, too
If face to face lessons are cancelled for practical reasons in the future, they may just go online
Tutors do miss face to face – you are not alone!
The value of both online AND face to face has been enhanced

Cons of tutoring online

So intense. It is intense staring at a screen all day and having to engage through a screen all day
Tutors miss the moments of stillness with face to face – online demands attention
Tutors miss having chats with parents after or before the lesson
Tutors miss the travel to and from lessons, often a form of exercise

Getting technical

Top online tutors use electronic pens and pen pads and get their students to use them too – great for learning writing etc
Microsoft Surface Pen works very well. Pupils use ipads

Online tutoring for maximum results

Make sure the pupil and tutor are by a window for natural light

Positives of Online Tutoring

Some tutors said that they like zoom better than phone calls as it’s helped them reconnect with people that wouldn’t normally be willing to have a phone call. So they find they are speaking to more people than before also because people are stuck at home with nothing to do

Opera and Ballet is normally too expensive to watch, but now it’s all free. This is amazing for kids as it will potentially inspire fans of opera and ballet who wouldn’t have known about these beautiful art forms otherwise. And musicals too

British museum and other offering virtual tours, which is such a great resource.