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Key takeaways:
- A clear online tutoring session structure should aim to keep students focused and effectively manage lesson time.
- The best tutoring session structure balances explanation, participation, practice, and frequent checks for understanding.
- A good structure should be flexible enough to adapt when a student needs more time, less time, or a totally different approach.
Why structure matters in online tutoring
Online tutoring and in-person tutoring don’t seem all that different on the surface. You’re teaching the same subjects, working with the same kinds of students, and usually trying to achieve the same learning goals. But teaching through a screen changes a few things in meaningful ways.
In person, tutors can pick up on a huge number of small tells without even thinking about them. A student might lean forward when they’re interested, or a tendency to glance around when they’re distracted. Most have a very unique and particular expression that says, “I have absolutely no idea what you just said, but I’m praying you’ll move on before you question me on it.”
A camera usually isn’t able to capture all these cues. On top of this, devices also make maintaining focus much more difficult. The same laptop being used for a math lesson likely also contains social media, games, messages, videos, and 36 other open browser tabs. For younger students, especially, that makes online learning a very different experience from sitting across from a tutor.
This is why online tutoring session structuring matters so much. As a 2021 study conducted during the rapid expansion of online learning notes, both lesson structure and learning styles have a significant influence on how well a student will grasp the material being taught.
That doesn’t mean you need to develop an entirely different lesson per student from scratch. However, it does mean that tutors need to carefully consider their students’ unique needs and preferences, spoken or unspoken.
Some students respond well to visual explanations. Others need to talk through an idea, work through a problem themselves, or actively practise a skill before it starts to make sense. Some are comfortable sitting with a challenging task for ten minutes. Others need more frequent changes in activity to stay focused.
If you want to create an effective online tutoring lesson plan, then you need to give students enough structure to stay on track while leaving room for those individual differences. Here’s how to find that balance.
Important parts of an online tutoring session
The finer details of your lessons will depend on the student, the subject, and your own teaching style. It goes without saying that a primary school reading lesson will look very different from university-level statistics tutoring.
Yet even so, almost every successful tutoring session has a similar rhythm. The following elements can provide a useful framework for almost any online tutoring session, even if you adapt the amount of time spent on each one.
Setting a clear learning objective
Start by getting your bearings. A quick check-in is essential for you to understand how your student is feeling and whether anything has changed since your last session. From there, it’s vital to establish what you’re aiming to accomplish in the current lesson.
It doesn’t have to be a complicated goal, especially for a brief session. All that matters is that, by the end of the session, your student has a measurably firmer grasp of the concept at hand. With a clear idea of what you’re both working toward, both the lesson itself and your student will have a much stronger sense of direction.
Assessing what the student already knows
Before explaining something new, find out where your student is starting from. Ask a few questions about what you learned last time, or do a general check for foundational understanding if you’re working on something new. Give them a short problem to solve. Ask them to explain the concept in their own words.
This step prevents you from spending twenty minutes explaining something that your student already understands. More importantly, it can reveal gaps that aren’t immediately obvious. They might know the definition of a concept but struggle to apply it; they might understand the basics but get stuck when the question is phrased differently. You won’t know until you check.
Introducing and explaining new material
Once you understand the student’s starting point, you can then start introducing new material in manageable pieces. It’s important not to unload every detail at once; what feels like a normal amount of information to an expert can feel like a lot to a novice. Explain one idea, use an example, and give the student an opportunity to respond or ask questions before moving forward.
The exact format you use will vary. You might explain something verbally, demonstrate it on a whiteboard, use a diagram, annotate a text, or work through an example together. All that matters is that your explanations encourage active learning rather than passive listening or observing.
Guided and independent practice
Practice is where students get the opportunity to turn their understanding into actual skill. Once you’ve demonstrated the desired process and outcome, try working through a problem or activity together. Ask questions, offer hints, and guide the student through the steps.
Then you can gradually start giving them more agency and responsibility. This might mean asking them to complete a similar problem without your help, analyse an entirely new text, write a paragraph on their own, or to explain their reasoning in their own words.
The goal isn’t to make yourself obsolete, but to nurture the student’s confidence in their own skills and knowledge.
Using interactive activities and digital teaching tools
One of the major advantages of online lessons is that they give tutors access to a diverse range of digital teaching tools. Use collaborative whiteboards, annotations, quizzes, videos, educational apps, and shared documents when they can meaningfully enhance your lessons. Using these tools for a change in activity or pace can also help students reset their attention.
Virtual classroom platforms like Pencil Spaces bring many of these tools into a singular place, making it easier to move between explaining, practising, annotating, and collaborating, all without the need to constantly switch between apps.
However, the tools themselves shouldn’t be what make your lessons engaging. The important question is always: How is this helping me help my students?
Checking understanding throughout the session
Don’t wait until the last five minutes to find out whether the student understood the lesson. Be sure to check in with them regularly throughout the session. Ask them to explain something back to you, solve a similar problem, summarise what they’ve learned, or tell you which part still feels confusing.
These progress checks make it easier to adjust the lesson while you still have the time to do something about a misunderstanding. Five minutes at the end likely won’t be enough, so proactivity is always key.
Wrapping up with a recap, feedback, and next steps
What the final few minutes should be used for is a proper landing. Briefly recap what you covered, and always try to highlight something the student did well. If there’s an area they still need to work on, you should also give them clear and constructive feedback.
Finally, you can discuss what comes next. This might include homework, independent practice, or simply the topic you’ll pick up in the next lesson. A definitive ending helps students leave the session knowing what they accomplished and where they’re headed next.
How to adapt when a student needs more or less time
Even the most well-structured online lesson plans can fall flat when put to the test. A plan down to the exact minute rarely survives first contact with a student.
Sometimes, a student will understand the new concept immediately, which will leave you with more time than you’d initially expected. And other times, you’ll discover halfway through the lesson that you need to revisit a past topic you assumed they already knew.
Both situations are totally normal. If a student needs more time, don’t feel pressured to race through the rest of your itinerary just because it was what you planned. Identify what matters most for your current session, and spend the time you’re left on what the student needs. If your sessions are recurring, you can always shift the remaining content to another session.
Conversely, if your student moves through the material faster than you expected, it can help to have a few extension activities ready. You could introduce them to a slightly more challenging problem, explore a real-world application together, or give the student an opportunity to teach the concept back to you.
Regardless of the subject or the student, a lesson plan should only serve to guide your sessions; it shouldn’t hold them hostage. Oftentimes, your ability to go with the flow and adapt to the context will matter more than your ability to plan. So long as your lessons have the basic building blocks listed above, you’ll have something solid to return to when things inevitably don’t go exactly as planned.
Structure gives your lessons direction. The right virtual classroom can make the rest of the process much simpler. Try Pencil Spaces for free, or book a free demo to see how it can support your online tutoring sessions.
