Online tutoring

[bananaz]

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I'm in my 2nd week of organic chemistry and starting to think I need a tutor. I am taking 17 credits + working 2 jobs + volunteering so it's going to be kind of hard to fit in tutoring sessions into normal human hours, but I have seen some online tutoring services that are very flexible (for example, uProdigy).

Has anyone tried online tutoring? Or have any feelings about it one way or another?

 

[badb100d]

I just want to address the practical aspects of this question because as with any sort of tutoring, quality is likely to depend on the individual tutor rather than the company. For organic you'll be doing a lot of drawing so just be sure to have a system to do that efficiently if you're going to use online tutoring. You don't want to be wasting time scanning in papers when you could be learning and likewise you don't want to be waiting for your tutor's drawings either. If you can get through this problem (maybe using a tablet or if you have a copy of chemdraw to use and are proficient at it) then I don't see any harm in giving the online tutoring a couple of trial sessions. 🙂

 

[kami333]

I signed up to be an online tutor but quit after I did some research about the company and a lot of what they claimed did not add up. Not saying that they were a scam, but I had suspicions that they weren't as legitimate as they claimed. Just be sure to check out the company and get referrals from people you actually know, some of the online testimonials I came across sounded suspiciously like employees masquerading as students (same names, similar emails, etc).

What are normal human hours? I used to tutor on top of full time classes and full time work, I only took students that wanted tutoring after 10pm or on weekends, I found that most students wanted something during the day though.

 

[bananaz]

I just want to address the practical aspects of this question because as with any sort of tutoring, quality is likely to depend on the individual tutor rather than the company. For organic you'll be doing a lot of drawing so just be sure to have a system to do that efficiently if you're going to use online tutoring. You don't want to be wasting time scanning in papers when you could be learning and likewise you don't want to be waiting for your tutor's drawings either. If you can get through this problem (maybe using a tablet or if you have a copy of chemdraw to use and are proficient at it) then I don't see any harm in giving the online tutoring a couple of trial sessions. 🙂

Those are some good points. I have seen some tutors who use Skype to video chat so they can do white board drawings in real time which seems it could work. Maybe I will just give a couple of them a test run and see how I like it. I would definitely not want to be dealing with scanning, too much hassle.

I signed up to be an online tutor but quit after I did some research about the company and a lot of what they claimed did not add up. Not saying that they were a scam, but I had suspicions that they weren't as legitimate as they claimed. Just be sure to check out the company and get referrals from people you actually know, some of the online testimonials I came across sounded suspiciously like employees masquerading as students (same names, similar emails, etc).

What are normal human hours? I used to tutor on top of full time classes and full time work, I only took students that wanted tutoring after 10pm or on weekends, I found that most students wanted something during the day though.

Yeah I have gotten a weird feeling about a few of these, especially the "company" types rather than individual tutors with faces and verifiable credentials.

During the week I am usually working until 8 or 9pm. If I could find a good live tutor willing to do late evenings or weekends that wold be awesome, but it seems that most want to do it during week days.

 

[badb100d]

I've had some awesome grad student tutors who were more than happy to tutor on the weekends. I simply asked my TA's in the courses for recommendations and they always had plenty.

 

[Tara Bell]

I never used this site for chemistry, but I used it all the time for math/physics-- it's Cramster.com. You pay to become a member and you can ask questions and have them answered by other qualified members. It's not really tutoring but it helped me a lot b/c people would give you little tips/tricks and show you different ways of looking at things.

 

[apumic]

Many schools have tutoring programs in place. Check with your school. Even if you are out of the schedulable hrs, they can often give references. The TA idea was great as well. Talk to your lab instructor. Often they are upper division students, grad students, or post-docs and know others who need a few extra bucks (or they may be willing to take you on themselves). I'd strongly recommend live tutoring over online, esp. for something as graphical/spatial as ochem.

 

[badb100d]

I never used this site for chemistry, but I used it all the time for math/physics-- it's Cramster.com. You pay to become a member and you can ask questions and have them answered by other qualified members. It's not really tutoring but it helped me a lot b/c people would give you little tips/tricks and show you different ways of looking at things.

+1 cramster saved my life in physics (esp. w/ hw and practicing problems for exams), although it's no substitute for a good tutor

 

[bananaz]

Thanks everybody for the responses, this has been really helpful. I signed up for Cramster and will talk to some of the TAs at lab today to see if they know anyone available for tutoring.

Would you recommend the "gold" or "platinum" subscription options for Cramster? How many karma points does one actually need?