The Future of Live Tutoring on the Internet

The Internet opened up huge opportunities for tech savvy tutors not that long ago. If you had a basic understanding of how to set up a website, a bit of SEO and online marketing knowledge, chances were high to grow a tutoring business from a local customer base into an international operation. Skype, tutoring platforms and marketplaces, YouTube and social media represent only a handful of the new tools tutors had at their disposal. Glory days.

Unfortunately, the Internet gives and the Internet takes away. This could be in the form of Google changing its algorithm, leading to the death of education marketplaces, like TeachStreet and countless other small businesses, because of a drop in organic traffic. But nowadays the biggest threat to human tutors are their technology driven counterparts and a growing crowd of interconnected learners.

Rise of the Machines

Any teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be! - Arthur C. Clarke, Electronic Tutors 1980

This quote by Arthur C. Clarke has been used heavily to underline the inevitable victory of machines over humans in our education system. While we can, and should, argue about this notion in public and higher education, I think it is a fair observation for the tutoring space. People who get paid by learners to teach have a tendency to retard the progress of their students (knowingly or subconsciously) for obvious reasons.

Another problem with live tutoring is that tutor and student have to agree on a date and time, which adds inconveniences like cancellations and lateness to the mix. Last but not least the cost of live tutoring is not insignificant, either. Therefore, students who want to progress at a faster rate have to pay more as they need to book more individual lessons.

Wisdom of the Crowd

And just as the Internet provided tutors with new opportunities to grow their business, the Internet started to offer alternatives to live tutoring.

One could argue that the beginning of the demise of live tutors lays in peer learning communities. In the education space language learning communities like Livemocha and busuu.com made the point early on. Compared to tutoring marketplaces like Myngle, italki or eduFire who had thousands of users, growth of learning communities was through the roof with users signing up in the millions.

Besides, the connection between learners who could meet online for language exchange or correct each others exercises, communities also offered different self-paced courses, enabling language learners to study at their own pace, no time commitment to meet with a teacher, tutor necessary. And with the addition of mobile apps, the user base of busuu.com quickly grew in the tens of millions. I will further explore this trend of mobile language learning in another post, especially the rise of Duolingo, which just recently surpassed 70 million users (or better put, people who signed up to the service).

Adapt or Die

Back to tutors and live lessons on the Internet. Keeping all the issues above in mind, what is the future of live tutoring online?

One thing that is certain, prices for live tutoring will continue to fall. The only exception to this are highly qualified tutors who offer niche training, especially in the corporate sector. The vast majority of online tutors, especially in the language learning space, will have to adapt to rates of $15 or even $10 per hour.

I also think that the length of lessons will shorten as new services, like tutoring on-demand, will grow in their popularity. Instead of booking a 30 minute lesson in advance, learners will look for on-demand tutors who offer a quick 10 or 15 minute call and work on a specific problem. This should become especially interesting in the STEM tutoring space.

On the other hand, we can also see new forms of live tutoring on the rise. Yoga lessons for example have been a growing vertical in the past three years. Instead of working out in the gym, people connect via VoIP and take the lessons in their living room. The same is true for crafting and other creative verticals.

All of the above also implies that, just like universities that produce MOOCs, tutors have to invest into more and better technology. A 0.5 megapixel webcam won’t cut the mustard. Tutors will need a film-studio-like environment, good lighting, multiple cameras, probably a camera operator, very good audio quality, reliable broadband connection etc.

The good news here is that prices for the equipment go down all the time, so it’s up to the tutor to invest in herself and learn the new tools of the trade - which might come in the form of taking a self-paced online course.