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- Help teach and support online courses
- You might be self-employed or work on a contract basis for a provider, and roles are often part time
- You'll need good IT skills, subject knowledge and knowledge or experience of teaching
As an online tutor, you'll be educating students, specialising in a particular subject area or age group.
DAY-TO-DAY DUTIES
- Set clear rules for online behaviour
- Help students develop their study skills
- Act as a point of contact for students' or parents' queries
- Give support by email, web-chat, social media or telephone
- Manage online discussion forums
- Set up audio and video conferencing
- Conduct 'virtual classrooms' (lessons given through web technology)
- Monitor students' progress
- Assess students' work
- Give constructive feedback
DAY-TO-DAY ENVIRONMENT
You'll usually work from home and arrange your hours to suit course requirements and the needs of your students. This may sometimes involve working in the evenings and at weekends. Part-time work is common, and you could work as a tutor alongside another job.
You'll need
To be an online tutor, you'll need knowledge of teaching and the ability to design courses, customer service skills, knowledge of English language, good initiative, knowledge of media production, communication and computer operating systems, the ability to come up with new ways of doing things, and to be good at working with others.
You may need a degree in a specialist subject depending on the level of course you plan to teach online. You might need to get qualified teacher status (QTS) if you're teaching academic qualifications.
You could do a college course like the Level 3 Award in Education and Training to get some of the skills needed for this job. This is suitable if you're not yet in a teaching role or have limited teaching hours.
You can usually take qualifications while you work.
Direct application is possible if you've got excellent IT skills; teaching, training or tutoring experience; and in-depth knowledge of the subject you're going to teach.
Alternatively, you could do a course with a private training provider, which can be done online.
You'll often need clearance from the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).
CAREER PROSPECTS
With experience, you could move into other areas of online education, like course development, management, private tuition or consultancy.