Peer tutoring is becoming widely popular around the world. Many students opt for peer tutoring for the ease of learning difficult concepts. In this article, you will learn what peer tutoring is and how peer tutors can help you achieve academic success. So, keep on reading!

What Is Peer Tutoring?

Peer tutoring is a learning method where students of the same or different grades assist other students of the same or different grades in learning various topics. A peer tutor can either be specialized to teach one subject or multiple subjects, depending on his or her skills and knowledge of the subject.

A peer tutor may be appointed by a class teacher. The teacher may instruct a student who is performing well in a particular subject to teach other students who have shown poor performance in the subject. This is known as Same-age Peer Tutoring.

A teacher may also divide the whole class into small groups. Each member of each group has to act as a tutor at a time and teach other members of the group. This is known as Classwide Peer Tutoring or CWPT. This kind of peer tutoring may also be called Reciprocal Peer Tutoring.

A peer tutor of a higher class can be chosen by a university or school to teach junior students in return for a nominal tuition fee. It is called Cross-age Peer Tutoring.

Many organizations are now hiring peer tutors from different schools or colleges to teach students all over the world. This has the advantage of allowing the learners to choose their peer tutors based on the experience or educational qualifications of the peer tutor. For example, My Tutor is an online learning platform where students can see a list of peer tutors with their expertise and qualifications. They can then choose the peer tutors as per their preferences.

How Can Peer Tutors Help Students?

A peer tutor can help students in many different ways, from learning a difficult subject to being comfortable discussing academic challenges.

1. Enhanced Comfort Level

One of the best ways a peer tutor can help a student is to be comfortable when learning a topic. Since peer tutors are either the learner’s age or only a few years older than him or her, the learner can easily feel relaxed in their presence. Besides, peer tutors who have already passed that age and dealt with the same subject before it becomes easy for him or them to understand the learner’s difficulty in grasping the concepts. Besides, many pupils are intimidated by the presence of an older tutor. So, appointing a peer tutor is the only way to make them feel relaxed.

2. Personalized Sessions

Platforms like the My Tutor app makes it possible for learners to have one on one session online with a peer tutor. A learner feels at ease and can ask many questions to clear his or her doubts without getting worried about time or other students. A peer tutor can even share instances of his or her own life to motivate students to perform well academically. Thus, peer tutoring is much more effective than normal tutoring.

3. Affordable Tuition Fees

Offline or online tuition fees, especially for high-school students, are expensive. But peer tutoring fees are nominal and affordable for almost everyone. For example, taking an hour session with a peer tutor will cost a student only $17.99. This is much cheaper compared to the high prices people have to pay for taking online tutoring sessions from school teachers or other tutors.

4. Easy Availability

Since the peer tutors are students themselves, they tend to tutor at a time when there will be no school or college. Many peer tutors prefer to teach only at the weekends. Therefore, learners will have peer tutors easily available after their school or college is over.

5. Online and Offline Access

Peer tutors are now easily accessible online, unlike old times when they were only available to teach offline at school or university. There are several apps and websites that make it possible for learners to take peer tutoring sessions online.

6. Helps to Build Confidence in Students

Same-age peer tutoring or Class-wide peer tutoring allows a student to play the role of both a tutor and a tutee. So, even the poor performers get a chance to showcase their knowledge. This helps to enhance their confidence. Besides, in the case of Cross-age peer tutoring, a lower-grade student may feel confident by seeing the peer tutor who is a senior-grade student excelling in a subject.

7. Better Learning of a Subject

Since a learner feels at ease with a peer tutor, he or she can take an interest in the subject being taught. Also, asking questions and attending personalized sessions make it possible for the learner to understand even a difficult concept.

Peer tutoring enhances a student’s critical and analytical skills. All in all, peer tutors can understand a student’s challenges with learning and help them remove the barriers between them and knowledge. Moreover, choosing a proficient peer tutor from the My Tutor app can make it easy for the students to learn from home at their own pace.