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This morning I read a very interesting article in the NY Times.

[...] Education moved from a bespoke craft to a more industrial approach. [...]

[...] Still, one-to-one tutoring is the learning method proven time and again to sharply improve a student’s measured performance. A good human tutor can deliver a “home run,” educationally and statistically, explained Christopher J. Dede, a professor of education at Harvard University. [...]

Very encouraging for the classic one-on-one private teacher / tutor, right? I will get back to this point of the article later because there is more to talk about.

Remember the report of the U.S. Department of Education that proved that online learning is at least as efficient as classic face to face learning, if not even more effective when both the methods are blended? This report is now quoted all the time.

When I first read this report I thought the reason why the US government did it was to have something to build a new strategy on. I did not think that they would transfer courses online because they are better than conventional courses, I thought the reason would be money. Saving money, to be exact. I think I was right, quoting the NYT

[...] The Department of Education recently announced that it was developing a new National Educational Technology Plan to provide a “vision of how information and communications technologies can help transform American education.” The plan, the agency said, will include “concrete goals,” with a draft expected early next year. [...]

As I thought. They just needed a proof that if the government wants to save money, the quality of the lessons would not decrease. The report delivers an even better result:

[...] students doing some or all of their course work online ranked in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile. [...]

So what can we expect? A total move towards online lessons? Maybe not.

[...] No one really expects classrooms to go away or K-12 and college students to learn in isolation. [...]

I still think reaching 80% of the courses are possible to be converted to online courses. You still want to do some real life experiments in chemistry, physics and other hands on topics but if you take a look at the classic curriculum of each discipline there is a lot of potential for online learning. And think about that: if 80% can be learned online, you as a teacher have 80% more time for all the important things like interaction, communication and one-on-one teaching.

And that brings us back to the 16th century teaching approach and that one-on-one teaching will make the difference between good singles and a home run.

Studies show that with about 40 hours of one-on-one attention of a teacher per year a student can mark one grade higher. Imagine you as teacher will finally have the time for this because most of the learning that not necessarily needs your attention will be done by the students online. Amazing, right?

And from the perspective of the independent online teacher like me, this means more business in the future. One-on-one won’t die out, it will constantly move online.

All in all a great article that shows once more the direction towards the education world is heading into, may it be public education or business driven education: online. As a teacher no matter if you are at a public school, university or if you are an independent one you have to adapt to this move.

Gary Vaynerchuk says it best in this video. Just exchange web 2.0 with online education .

So don’t let the wave break your face, ride the wave instead.

You can read the NYT article over here.

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About Kirsten Winkler

Education 2.0 Blogger at KirstenWinkler.com, Interviewer at EDUKWEST.com, Consultant at WinklerMedia.com.

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heikephilp

:-) Smile.

You tend to find articles that seem to fit your business model.

I do believe though that group tuition will be the real 'driver' for live online learning because we learn from others even more than from a tutor.

Just think of joining a class with other learners from other parts of the country, how enriching and inspiring this is as opposed to just 'one coach'.

I believe the future of live online is in group tuition - once the numbers of students versus the number of teachers go up. Right now there is an over-supply of teachers, this is why the prices are so low too.

Once this balances out, we will see great group tuition forming

Take for example employees of one global company with many branches worldwide decides that their employees need to learn German and they are put together in small groups with similar levels.
What a great way to get employees to collaborate live online.

Rgds Heike
chinamike

I don't see why this has to be either/or. 1-to-1 tutoring can complement group learning over the course of a lifetime covering a whole range of fields.

In fact there is another option to both of these that falls in the middle--small group learning which has elements of extreme personalization which large group learning doesn't (yet).

And in terms of prices I doubt prices will rise (on average) in the long term. That would go against the general Internet trend which sees prices falling not rising when services move to the Internet.
KirstenWinkler

1o1 can only be a complement to other learning approaches. No one can afford 1o1 learning in an intensity that comes close to asynchronous learning or group lessons / lectures.
Plus 1o1 is not scalable. If you want to build a business on 1o1 like I did you need to offer the best service to your clients, which is a very time consuming thing. Therefore you need to take a high price to be able to make your business sustainable.

This is mind, I don't think the price for 1o1 lessons will fall. And I am not talking about the experiments that some teachers try on platforms. I am talking about a business with a goal. During the three years and more I am teaching online my prices went constantly up, not down. So did the quality of my teaching and the number of long term students.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think that this business model will work for the whole market. It can't, because it is a niche product. If you want to serve a bigger niche, you need to go for group lessons and mass teaching / lecturing.
And in this niches, the prices will fall because of the demand. As soon as online lessons will get mainstream in India and China the prices will fall towards 0.50 cents and hour. But on the other hand you will have hundreds of students attending your class.

We will see a big shift in the coming months and years. That's for sure. And I am glad that I am living in these times of change :).
KirstenWinkler

Oh, this is not to celebrate the one-on-one approach. This kind of teaching is just my favourite one. ;)

I am doing a lot of group lessons, too. The real difference is that, as Christopher J. Dede says, in a group lessons you will never get the homerun. You can bring it to a very good level, but champions are made in 1o1 sessions.

My business model for the future is: 80% of the learning is done by the student himself online. That includes also work in groups and lecturing of teacher / tutors either asynchronous by video / podcast or synchronous in a virtual classroom. 15% might be real world learning and 5% 1o1.

What I think is important to see here is that 1o1 still is a premium teaching model as it used to be in the 16th century. Only rich families had access to private teachers for their children. The question here is if this model is going to change. Because if their is a higher global demand for 1o1 lessons, we need more teachers, offline but especially online, of course.

And I am very aware that group learning is huge in other areas of the world. 1o1 is a European approach but if you take a look at South Korea, China or Japan group lessons are far more popular. But also with a growing number of students who take both, group sessions and private tutoring 1o1.

So, I am not at all against group tuition, but if I could choose, as a teacher and a student, I would go for 1o1.
chinamike

Excellent!

I remember once reading that the key difference in a tutorial is that the student gets just enough time doing what he or she needs to do to learn the material. In other words the needs and most importantly the pace of the class are often dictated by the single student.

It is not so much the "elevated" ability of the tutor but rather the fact that we have time to precisely meet the needs of the students that accounts for the superiority of tutoring (the superior effect of tutoring has been documented for years).

Think about this.......many students are just mere minutes away from "getting" something when their teacher decides to move on.

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