Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (2000). How People Learn (Vol. 11). Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

This germinal work is deeply rooted in the core values at Tutor.com. Our tutors do not support rote memorization nor answer-giving, and as Bransford and his team revealed, it is through understanding that we learn. Learning involves building understanding based on existing mental schemata and developing conceptual and procedural knowledge of specific subject topics. Tutors are encouraged to foster this process by engaging through interaction, one-on-one with individual students, as learners seek to better understand the work they are engaged with; most often from the classrooms where they are led by teachers. Tutors do not simply transfer knowledge but rather, take time to access user understanding, introduce and guide through inquiry, and help students apply new connections appropriately in context. This includes acclimating to the individual’s learner style and preferences revealed through the one-on-one interactions. This informs tutors of the needs of the sessions and to adjust using the tools and capabilities available in the online classroom platform. This study also continues to inform current practices as we assess and improve quality of tutoring in sessions and begin developing and disseminating our own evidence for Bransford’s axioms.

Hrastinski, S., Keller, C., & Carlsson, S. A. (2010). Design exemplars for synchronous e-learning: A design theory approach. Computers & Education, 55(2), 652–662.

Hrastinkski et al. (2010) provided important work that initiated conversations and the offering of both asynchronous as well as synchronous online tutoring at Tutor.com. While essays were more commonplace for asynchronous sessions, live or synchronous sessions provide real time questions and answers to support learning that is scaffolded and speaks to learners who prefer the one-on-one engagement (later revealed as social presence in online learning experiences). In less popular asynchronous sessions, such as for STEM-related areas, for example, discussions ensued about answer-giving and implementing practices of providing parallel or example problems to help a learner associate the problems and questions they may be assigned during coursework. The findings from this study supported the Tutor.com philosophy that, “choice of communication media to be dependent on the way in which it can support the educational processes” (Hrastinski, 2010, p.656) for the learner seeking the support.

Dorn, E., Hancock, B., Sarakatsannis, J., & Viruleg, E. (2020). COVID-19 and learning loss—disparities grow and students need help. McKinsey & Company, December 8, 224–228.

As we follow the literature in more recent times; trends and findings of the Covid and post-pandemic educational impacts on education, we aim to heed the call that online tutoring can and should be used to address loss-of-learning across the country. With development to design better platforms for the teachers that recommend online tutoring, we also seek models that will reach the wide diversity of students tasked with learning. This may be high dosage tutoring or small group tutoring and several pilots are ongoing to explore the benefits and consequences for learners and their programs. These findings will inform the next round of development discussions and enhance our tutoring platforms even more.