There is little doubt that 1-to-1 tuition has the potential to accelerate students’ learning, tackle knowledge gaps, raise their confidence and increase their academic performance across all subjects and levels. The reason for this lies solely in the fact that this mode of instruction is designed to cater specifically to individual students' learning needs.
However, the reality is that only a minority in society can afford the services of a private tutor. The natural consequence of such a disparity is that the attainment gap between those who can afford private tuition and those who cannot is only bound to widen.
A solution that can effectively solve the aforementioned problem of accessibility and level the playing field amongst students is group online tuition. Group lessons not only provide students with the opportunity to share the cost of lessons, but they also provide tutors with a platform to expand their reach. Moreover, they allow schools, educational institutions, and government bodies to deploy targeted tuition programmes at scale.
Whilst the economics of group lessons naturally increases affordability, this is by no means the only benefit that group lessons have to offer. Group online lessons have also been shown to increase engagement and focus among students, they add an element of accountability that pushes students to perform, and they expose students to other perspectives thus driving them to further consolidate their knowledge.
After witnessing the staggering uptake from students on LessonWise over the last 4 months, with enrolment rates rising to 115 students in a single lesson at times, and analysing available literature on group tuition and collaborative learning, we have summarised the main benefits that make it a transformative tutoring alternative:
We believe that online group lessons have the potential to effectively solve significant problems in society such as learning gaps amongst pupils, attainment gaps between those who have had access to private tutors in their life and those who haven’t, school readiness amongst primary and secondary school children, high-stress levels due to academic overload and lack of access to the right support, and lack of support in exam preparation.
Everyone deserves access to the life-changing benefits of private tuition and here at LessonWise, it is our mission to scale participation through live online group lessons.
Manfred Olbrich, CEO & Founder of LessonWise.
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Friedman, T. (2012), ‘Come the Revolution’, New York Times. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/opinion/friedman-come-the-revolution.html/ (Last accessed on 7 May 2022).
Kurni, M., & Saritha K. (2021), ‘Applying Collaborative Learning for Enhancing the Teaching-Learning Process in Online Learning through Social Media’, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), 16(16), pp. 251–259. Available on: https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v16i16.23207
Sternad Zabukovšek, S. et al. (2022), ‘Attractiveness of Collaborative Platforms for Sustainable E-Learning in Business Studies’ Sustainability, 14(1857):1-25.
Sumtsova, O.V. et al. (2018), ‘Collaborative Learning at Engineering Universities: Ben- efits and Challenges’, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 13 (1): 160-177.
Wang., C. & LuSha H. (2021), ‘A Systematic Review of Serious Games for Collaborative Learning: Theoretical Framework, Game Mechanic and Efficiency Assessment’, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 16 (6): 88-105. Available on: https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v16i06.18495