Colleges hiring online tutoring services to help students out of teaching hours
Today&rsquo;s students are used to accessing content whenever they want it, but institutions must consider what responsibilities they have when teachers are off-duty. Peter West, director of learning at St. Stephen&rsquo;s College in Australia, writes that 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 help guide students through the problem rather than simply giving answers.
Supporting off-hours learning is a problem you might not even know you have.

Recently, I began dubbing the current generation of students the “Netflix Generation.” They learn when they want, and expect learning resources to be available when and where they need them.

This is similar to the way they consume media through streaming services such as Netflix (for movies and television series) and Spotify (for music); they binge watch TV series multiple episodes in a row, and they expect a wide range of music to be available when and where they want. If they listen to a song in the car, they expect to be able to pick it back up in the house or while waking down the street. Increasingly, they expect learning resources to be available in the same fashion.

Smart educational organizations have built rich online courses filled with learning resources to support this type of learning. The old paradigm where learning occurs only in a classroom or lecture hall during school hours is gone. But in off hours, when teachers are at home, what will take their place?

(Next page: Giving students study help off-hours)