How to be successful in online tutoring in 2022: 6 tips for beginners

Online tutoring can be really exciting and give you the opportunity to work remotely, travel the world, and become a digital nomad, which is something a lot of people dream about nowadays.

Even though nowadays more and more people work online, there are still a lot of companies that require their employees to work from the office, thus they can only travel on their holidays which are limited.

A lot of different online tutoring methods exist and only you can decide which one fits your tutoring style the best. However, there are some common practices that can help you succeed in online tutoring.

1) Do Your Research

Before starting to tutor online, it is only smart to do your research on online tutoring. For example, to take a course or two yourself. This way, you will be able to see and analyse how other professionals teach online and it may even help you discover your own tutoring style and method.

More to it, if you are new to online tutoring, taking a few classes will also help you understand if you really want to tutor online. There are lots of online teaching jobs that you can choose from, just make sure that you are aware of the requirements and salary range.

2) Have Everything Planned

It is very important to plan your online tutoring. Come up with a strategy and stick to it. In order to help you plan your time, online you will find a lot of free tools and applications that help you plan your tasks, take notes, and create reminders.

Depending on your teaching method, you may want to prepare some extra material, so you will need to plan your time to have it ready when the lecture starts. A piece of advice: never leave the preparation of the lecture until the last minute.

3) Dress Professionally

Working from home gives you a strong sense of comfort, however, you need to always remember that you are the teacher and you have to both act and look professional, so pay attention to what kind of clothes you wear during the lectures.

Even though looks do not outweigh the importance of knowledge, it will help you build authority, especially if you are teaching younger students. Making yourself appear as their equal is not always the best idea.

4) Make Your Content Engaging

When you prepare for your online lectures, make sure that all lectures are not just you speaking in a monologue. For example, you can ask your students questions, prepare tasks for them to do during the online lecture, or also prepare some homework for them.

More to it, you can as well prepare or recommend some extra content for them to read and deepen their knowledge in the field. It could be books, audiobooks, some reading material that you wrote especially for your online tutoring classes, or even some slides with more visual material.

5) Track the Progress

Whichever teaching method you choose to use for your online classes and whether you believe in giving your students some homework or not, you should figure out a way to track the progress that your students have made.

This way, your students will know if the online classes are actually helping them and if they should continue or not. Also, it may help you improve your online tutoring skills as well.

For instance, maybe some of the strategies that you were applying in your tutoring are not effective and you should take the opportunity to try out some new ones.

6) Offer Help to Your Students

Depending on what you choose to teach online, your students might need your help more or less during your free time. This highly depends on your work ethic but if, for example, you are teaching your students math and they are preparing for a very important exam in the late evening, they might have some questions they want to ask you.

Being available and helping the students in such critical situations will make them appreciate you more and it will also give them more reason to rather choose you as their online tutor than someone else that charges less but is never available.