Online Tutoring May Be Offered at Manchester
Noah Tong
To help students succeed in the classroom, senior Ryan Morley is looking to revamp the tutoring services offered at Manchester.
Currently, students can physically attend study sessions with tutors at the Academic Center and Science Center on specific weekdays. Morley is proposing transitioning tutoring services to an online application.
“I think tutoring services is something a lot of students would want provided online because you can’t always make it physically to the study tables,” Morley said. “In that essence it fills a need.
“The idea came about in a brainstorming session that the tutors had with Academic Support Services,” Morley continued. “I brought it up, and they thought it would be a great idea.”
Right now, this idea is in the planning phase. With guidance from Professor Robin Mitchell, faculty advisor for the project, Morley hopes to have something ready by the end of the spring semester.
The online study tables would be available for all students. Any class on campus could be offered for tutoring services, provided it is requested by academic support services or faculty from specific majors. Assuming there are peer tutors available, an online study course could be created. The process for establishing study tables would be no different in this new program than it is now.
Although widespread changes could be approaching soon, Morley believes implementing online tutoring is a win-win proposition for everyone involved.
“Right now, we’re trying to think of this as a supplemental tool, because some students might learn better by going to a tutor and having that face-to-face conversation,” Morley said. “We still want to make that available to everyone.
“We haven’t quite decided on how it would work quite yet,” he continued. “We are thinking the tutors would be on the system during the set study-table hours.”
Through this project Morley, a software engineering and math double major, will be able to apply what he has learned in the classroom to make a practical difference in students’ lives on-campus. “This project revolves around software engineering majors creating the web application,” Morley explained.
“We haven’t decided what languages this system will know yet,” Morley continued, noting that the technical aspects and design features of the web application are undetermined at the present date. “The language a lot of students on campus are familiar with is Java.”
The new tutoring system may not a finished product, but Morley has worked a full schedule up to this point. “The workload is like adding another class,” he explained.
Ultimately, Morley’s goal is for this cutting-edge tutoring system is to be nearly a finished product by the time he graduates.
“I hope it all comes together so we are able to provide this service to the Manchester University students,” Morley said. “That way they are able to get the help when they need it.”