Online Tutoring for Military Members

Article By Kevin K. Dean

Online learning has experienced an explosion in the last decade. Seaman and Allen (2008) found that at least 20% of all higher education students are taking courses online and the rate of growth for online is far outpacing traditional face to face classes.

Unfortunately, research has shown the failure rate to be higher for online classes; Xu & Jaggars (2011) found that online students fail at a higher rate than students taking online classes however they also found that online students are more likely to be working. This is the great paradox of online classes because busy working adult students with families tend to opt for online classes and they don’t complete them because they are busy.

There are many way to address the issue of struggling in online classes. One important measure that can be taken is to use the available resources. One great resource for online student is online tutoring. For active duty military service members and their dependents, U.S. National Guard personnel and their dependents, Wounded Warriors and Survivors and their dependents, U.S. military reservists and their dependents and DoD civilians in a deployed status and their dependents an online tutoring service is available for free at http://www.tutor.com/military.

This program is paid for by the Department of Defense MWR Library Program and Yellow Ribbon Reintegration Program. Students that use Tutor.com are signed up with an expert in the academic field and they interact in a secure online environment anytime 24/7. The tutors cover more than 20 academic areas to include math, science, social studies and English. This program is unique because it includes National Guard and Reserve members and they do not have to be on title 10 orders and it includes dependents so military children can use the tutoring service for free.

Research has shown that students that use self regulation techniques will reach out for help and are far more successful than those that attribute failing to external variables. Using an online tutoring service is a good first step for military students that wish to succeed in an online environment. Some online colleges such as Thomas Edison and Empire State College use online tutoring services such as SMARTHINKING.com. This tutoring service is excellent for students to use to hone their writing skills as there is a great difference between military report writing and academic writing. One major difference is that academic writing requires multiple drafts before the finished work is polished enough to be handed in as classwork. Smarthinking will review students’ written work and offer constructive advice as to how to re-write papers.

Every military student should use the available resources and take the online classes seriously. Studies have shown that military students who earn college degrees get promoted faster and go further and those who leave the service will experience less unemployment and earn more money (Garcia, Joy, & Reese, 1998).