From time to time, MyGuru posts short explanatory videos on some of the concepts our tutoring students are learning about. Here's a short video on the concept of the...
The world today is not the same as the world we lived in two months or even two weeks ago. The global pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus (aka COVID-19) has completely disrupted all economic and social life, and its true effects are only just beginning to be felt. We are all entering a time of uncertainty such as none of us have faced before, as individuals or as a collective. As the virus infects more and more of the global population, greater numbers of people are going to be forced into isolation within their homes, having their work-lives transformed or completely shut down. What are we going to do? How should we be spending all the extra energy and time many of us will now have, but which none of us asked for?
While of course we will all have to learn new ways to help care for ourselves, our loved ones, and our fellow community members, one thing that would be a good idea for almost everyone to consider is investing in their education with online tutoring. While many high school and college students are now finishing the school year via e-learning, online tutoring is a specific, additional investment in your education and can pay dividends for many different types of students.
In this article we’ll take you through some of the reasons why many different kinds of people would benefit from online tutoring.
Benefits of Online Tutoring for High School and College Students
Schools all over the world are moving to various online platforms in an effort to keep kids away from dense crowds where the virus might pass rapidly through large populations. Many schools have developed highly effective Googlesites platforms with PowerPoint lessons and links to other online learning resources. In addition to Googlesites, Adobe is another example of a centralized resource from which a teacher can recommend online lessons. The online lessons or resources can include content from anything from Kahn Academy to hundreds of other online learning options.
But many students may have difficulty adjusting to an online platform. Some students might find it difficult to follow the material or to establish a personal connection with a teacher. Online tutoring, whether you use Zoom, Skype, WebEx, or our particular approach to online tutoring, can offer one-on-one, customized tutorials, essay and homework help, and more, making sure students don’t fall behind. High school and college are crucial times in a student’s education, as this is often the last and most specialized form of instruction a student will receive as they prepare to enter the workforce. That’s going to be a difficult enough transition in the age of coronavirus, so these students will really benefit from doing everything they can to solidify the quality of their learning.
Further, studies show that once students in high school and college fall behind, or even take a temporary leave of absence from their education, they are far less likely to be able to catch up to their peers. You absolutely do not want this to be you! Especially considering that the impacts of the coronavirus on the economy, and the ensuing recession, are going to put all of us at a disadvantage as we try to return to the workforce in the coming months.
But online tutoring won’t just help you make sure you keep your grades up. It can also help high school and college students to make the strongest possible moves as they prepare for the next step in their education. It may be hard to predict what the future economic landscape will look like, but with the likelihood of economic slowdown and recession increasing by the day, one thing that’s obvious is that those who have more education will be better off. So the move to online learning can actually be turned into an advantage for students who use the extra time to bone up on their preparation for those crucial standardized tests which may be the ticket to getting into the right college or graduate school. Have you always thought you might be interested in going to law school, but felt afraid you’d never be able to conquer the LSAT? Then this is the perfect time to start online LSAT tutoring! Or, perhaps you are a high school student. You now have way more time to consider engaging in online ACT or SAT tutoring. The same goes for any other future education move you might want to make—whatever it is, there’s probably some kind of standardized test between you and the next step (be it the ACT/SAT, the GRE, the GMAT…). Don’t be left in the dust when the economy starts moving again. Start preparing yourself today!
Benefits of Online Learning for Young Professionals and New Work from Homers
Working remotely, distance learning, and telecommuting have been on the rise in recent years with advances in telecommunications technology, but the coronavirus is sending more workers than ever before into a work-from-home situation. Even workers who previously advocated for the option to work remotely and were denied by their bosses are now finding that modern technology gives many professionals all the tools they need to function seamlessly without having to go into an office. (The same, of course, can be true for students who pursue online tutoring, presuming they work with the right tutors and the right tools.) But still, for many workers who have recently made or are just now making the transition to a work-from-home lifestyle, it’s really difficult to know how far their current setup will take them into the future. Will they eventually hit some kind of professional wall where they reach the end of what they can accomplish from home? Or will their businesses ultimately fail to weather the economic recession, or to maintain enough productivity to keep all their employees? It might be time to consider heading to business school and considering an investment in online GMAT tutoring to help you do that. You now have far more flexibility to build meeting with a tutor virtually into your day. Why not take advantage of it?
Historically, recessions have always been excellent times for self-motivated people to increase their education, learning new skills, earning new degrees and certificates, or even forging entirely new career paths, exploring dreams that they never quite got around to before. However, in the past, many people have turned back to education in times of recession as a last resort, when they couldn’t find any work. But in today’s world, there’s no reason the turn to education has to come out of desperation. Even if you are lucky enough to still have steady employment in the near future, the fact that you may now be transitioning to working from home anyway can serve as an excellent opportunity to take the next step and increase your education. Maybe there’s a possible promotion within the organization you’re already a part of that’s only available to those with more education than you currently have. Or maybe you’re looking out enviously at other organizations but don’t yet feel you’re the most competitive applicant. Or maybe you’re just the kind of scrappy self-starter who’s always looking for an edge, or always seeking out new opportunities for self-improvement. Whatever your situation, you’re never too old to learn more.
If the above sounds like you, perhaps studying for the GMAT to go to business school or preparing for the GRE to attend a traditional graduate school is not the answer (although, more and more traditional graduate business and other types of degrees are moving online). Perhaps you should consider earning a certificate on a platform like Coursera. This is something you can start doing immediately, without any sort of application, and thus begin building up your Linkedin profile and resume immediately.
And as the economy slowly tries to regain some sense of normalcy in the coming months, you might never again have an opportunity like this one, where the tools and the time to maximize your resume and maximize your own working & earning potential are so clearly available to you. And for those workers who are unlucky enough to be laid off in this difficult time, or in the months ahead, instead of just waiting for the first opportunity to settle for whatever gig you can scrounge up, why not take this as an opportunity to increase your education and better position yourself so that when the next recession hits, you’ll be indispensable?
Why Online Tutoring Can Be Indispensable for Parents
Many parents with young children are now being faced with what must seem like an impossibly difficult situation. On the one hand, many parents are now having to transition to working from home, which they may not have any experience with. The learning curve might seem steep, especially at first, and especially with all the other confusion and fear in the world. At the same time, children’s schools and daycare facilities will be closed for the foreseeable future, meaning parents will be responsible for caring for and educating their own children all day long, something they may not have any experience with at all! (There are already scores of accounts of parents who are suddenly realizing their kid’s teachers have been drastically underpaid for all the work they have to do.) These various factors can be impossible for parents to balance. And when work and the ability to provide for your family is at stake, especially in a time of crisis, it’s easy to imagine that many kids’ home-schooling will fall by the wayside as parents just look for ways to survive.
But that doesn’t have to be the case. This is exactly what online tutoring was made for. Online tutoring can help with kids’ home-schooling in multiple ways. For one thing, trained and qualified educators can help kids connect with the necessary material and can even help them get ahead, so whenever they return to school, they do so with a leg-up. At the same time, these experienced educators can make online tutoring feel very much like proper education, helping to give kids a sense of normalcy that they’re desperately craving. And providing children with the feeling of a more formal education environment is much likelier to help them stay focused and disciplined than just learning from Mom and Dad, which kids aren’t used to doing. And online tutoring can even offer some advantages compared to the traditional classroom model of schooling. Parents will be able to customize their kids’ curriculum and their schedule, so parents won’t have to deal with the dilemma of who is going to have the kids dropped off at school when both parents have to be at work at the same time—online tutoring can work for you.
Online Tutoring Can Be an Enabler for Anyone Who Wants to Help
Lastly, and perhaps most somberly, the coronavirus pandemic is likely to transform our society not only over the coming months, but perhaps indefinitely after that. It is going to touch all of our lives in some way or another, and it’s going to require us to learn new ways of acting in solidarity and helping one another. Most saliently, it’s going to put incredible demands on our healthcare industry and going to make an unprecedented number of people vulnerable and in need of care. Whether you’re an ambitious undergrad who has always wanted to go to med school, or a young professional who’s unsatisfied with your job and considering a change, you might consider online tutoring as an opportunity to help you shift into a career track that will allow you to make a real difference in helping human beings. The demand for doctors, nurses, medical researchers, epidemiologists, and healthcare workers of all kinds is only going to increase as the pandemic spreads. While positions in the healthcare industry might seem demanding, they are surely never going to feel boring or without meaning. And more pragmatically, they are likely to remain in demand through almost any kind of economic downturn, promising more stability than almost any other sector.
But of course these kinds of jobs involve putting vulnerable people in the hands of other human beings, so good intentions will only take you so far. The educational path toward working in the healthcare industry can be demanding and selective, which is why online tutoring can make such a difference. It can help you get the scores you need on the right standardized tests, but it can also work with you every step of the way to make sure you’re deeply learning the material that you’re going to use some day to save lives. If you’re suddenly moved by the urge to make a real difference in people’s lives, then this could be the perfect time to take a step toward a career in health and wellness. You can, for example, begin studying for the MCAT and work with an MCAT tutor to help you develop a study plan.
About the Author
Mark Skoskiewicz is the Founder of MyGuru. Over the years, he's worked with our Director of Online Tutoring to develop our unique online approach and tools. For more information, contact us here.