Skype or Face-to-Face Tutoring: What is Better?

Call me an old codger but when I first heard about Skype tutoring, I was dubious. I thought face-to-face tutoring would always be the best way to teach and learn.

Years later, I am changing my tune.

After working with clients both online and in person, I find that Skype tutoring can be as effective as face-to-face tutoring. In fact, in some cases, Skype tutoring might even be more effective.

Consider the following four reasons why Skype tutoring could be better than face-to-face tutoring:  

1) Better Use of Time: Assuming a family would have to travel to a tutoring session, a sessions via Skype can be a better use of time. We typically offer 90-minute sessions. If a family has to travel to the lesson, one 90-minute session might actually take two hours or more including travel time.

2) Less Stress: Driving kids around to all of their various commitments is stressful. Not just for you but for kiddos as well. Even the most organized schedules are not stress-proof. Since the goal of test prep is to reduce as much stress as possible, Skype tutoring offers a less stressful approach that won't have mom and dad schlepping kiddos and supplies all over town.

3) Save Money: Skype tutoring can often be more economical. If our tutors don't have to travel to a client's home or other location for the class, we can charge less per hour to the family. Charging less allows the family to save money or even schedule more sessions.

4) Same Results: We don't have a statistically significant sample size of Skype clients vs face-to-face clients. Nevertheless, over the past five years, we have seen improvements of equal amount with students that work via Skype and students that work face-to-face. The common denominator is always how much quality work the student does in between sessions. The more practice sets a student can do over time, the more comfortable they will become. This has nothing to do with meeting a tutor in person or online.

Ultimately, two main factors remain determine test improvement: time and motivation. Regardless of online or in person tutoring sessions, a student who has both the time and the motivation to put in the work will see a score improvement.

To set up a Skype or face-to-face tutoring session, contact CROSSWALK today. CROSSWALK offers private tutoring, boot camps and group classes for SAT, ACT, PSAT and SSAT.