Describe Project and Impact:
Providing K-12 students with access to live, online tutoring will ensure they receive the help they need, especially as funding for public education is being slashed.
Project Description and Expected Outcomes:
I'm proposing we subscribe to an online homework help service (like Brainfuse or Tutor.com) that provides live online tutoring (i.e. homework help) for the hours after school, into the evening, and on weekends. These services provide tutoring primarily for K-12 students but there is also tutoring available for college and adult learners and ESL students. Members are connected to a live tutor via a chat window in which they can chat about the school subject, the member can upload a document so the tutor can see the member's homework assignment, and both parties share a whiteboard so the tutor can use it just as a teacher would use a chalkboard in the classroom. Tutoring is provided for dozens of subjects in English and Spanish and help is also available for AP courses, the GED, ACT, SAT, TOEFL, the US citizenship test. Both of these homework help services provide writing assistance so a member can upload a writing assignment, have it proofread within a day or two, and learn to become a better writer as well as submit better quality homework. The tutors for each of these services are thoroughly vetted with state and federal background checks and they are rigorously tested to ensure they have the capability to be a tutor for a specific subject. Additionally, quality control staff routinely monitor the chat sessions between student and tutor to ensure everything is on the up and up.
I think having access to free, high-quality homework help would be enthusiastically welcomed by teachers, parents, and students. The ability for students to receive this help on their laptop or mobile device and "at the speed of their life" would drive up the usage of this service by new and existing cardholders and further dispel the notion of the library as simply a "book warehouse." Paired with ONEcard, this service would knock down a number of barriers that currently prevent students from receiving high-quality homework help.
Why should we select this project?:
With the recent funding cuts to schools and with more cuts to come, ensuring that students have the resources they need to succeed should be a priority for everyone. I think the addition of a homework help service would be welcome by parents, especially those whose kids are taking pre-calculus, physics, chemistry, or any similar class that's making all the parents who are reading this sentence cringe. I think it would also be an incredibly useful tool for students of all ages, especially considering a number of them already have their face buried in one screen or another. The online homework help program used by Tulsa Library and Pioneer Library is very popular with students, parents, and the local schools and if we subscribed to the same product, we could probably negotiate consortium pricing.
Constraints, Limitations, or Dependencies:
cost, buy in from the community
Partner/Supporting Departments:
Digital Library
Public Services
