Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Studyloft.com offers tutor for students 24/7
By Christy Stelzer
The Daily Vidette (Illinois State U.)
04/24/2006

(U-WIRE) NORMAL, Ill. — With finals around the corner, libraries, study spots and tutors are likely to fill up fast.

The new Internet service Studyloft.com was designed to help in this situation and offers tutors for students 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Nearly 6,000 students have registered with studyloft.com since the program began in November 2005.

This online tutoring service specializes in math and science, including biology, chemistry, physics, math, statistics, economics and accounting.

There are currently 37 hired tutors, all of whom are professionally trained with nothing lower than a master's degree in their area of expertise.

Studyloft.com gives students the opportunity to experience one-on-one help any time of the day or week.

This program is also anonymous in hopes of encouraging more students to use the program.

"We figured this would be ideal for students because not only is it 24/7, it's also anonymous," Bikram Roy, the principal of studyloft.com, said. "Wherever you are, as long as you have Internet access, you can get the help you need with an expert, and it's very cost efficient."

The program costs $18 per hour, and students may go on for five minutes for help with one math problem and would be charged accordingly.

According to Roy, Studyloft.com is equipped with chat interaction, file sharing, a whiteboard and webMathematica.

WebMathematica allows tutors to help students visualize math and science results through 3D charts and graphs.

"We try to put in everything that we can to kind of make up for not being physically there next to you," Roy said.

The online tutoring service increases staff around midterms and finals to ensure quality attention to everyone who needs it.

Andrew Trigg, a junior history education student at Illinois State University, said he would be willing to pay for online tutoring.

"I've had many nights where I've been stumped on a math or a science question where I didn't know exactly where to go, and it would be nice to have the ability to ask the teacher or ask somebody who is very well educated in those areas to help me out," Trigg said.

Roy said there have been requests to add composition, proofreading and foreign language tutoring to the online program, and Studyloft.com is also planning to add preparation programs for the ACT and SAT tests for high school students.

Studyloft.com is hopeful those programs will be up and running by next school year.

This online tutoring program is targeted, but not limited to, college students.

To utilize this online tutoring program, visit studyloft.com to register.

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