Giving Compass' Take:

· Michael B. Horn talks about innovation in higher education and whether online tutoring for students could be the gateway to personalizing learning in colleges.

· How could online tutoring be the gateway to innovation and personalizing learning in higher education? 

· Here's more on how online resources are helping personalize learning. 

A few years ago, the ReWired Group and Bob Moesta, my coauthor on my next book, Choosing College, undertook a project for the tutoring marketplace company, Wyzant.

As players like Byjus, Khan Academy, and others have disrupted the tutoring market, online tutoring companies, which offer access to real, live tutors, have mostly struggled to break out of a crowded market.

The question Wyzant, which began as a platform that typically facilitated face-to-face tutoring sessions, wanted to understand was what “Job to Be Done” were people hiring it to do in their lives—that is, what is the progress people were trying to make that caused them to pay for Wyzant’s services.

In Bob’s words, they initially discovered four discreet “Jobs”:

1. Help me recover from failure. After students failed in something in school, they would hire Wyzant to help them get back on track.

2. Help me ensure my success—and avoid painful failure. Students hired Wyzant before trouble arrived.

3. Help me get the skills I need now to do my job or help me get the skills I need in the future to look good. Employees with this Job were either currently working in a job where they didn’t have the requisite skillset and they wanted to cover up for it, or they were eyeing their future and knew they needed to improve their skillset so they could look good in the eyes of their colleagues.

4. Help me advance in my hobby or passion. People wanted help in a variety of pursuits. Rather than hire a full-time private instructor, an on-demand tutor was good enough.

Read the full article about on-demand online tutoring for personalized learning by Michael B. Horn at the Christensen Institute.