American Falls School District 381 launched a 24/7 online tutoring program for its students, making it the first district in Idaho to offer the tech-savvy service.
The learning program, called Paper, gives students virtual access to trained and qualified tutors in any subject any time of the day. The tutors are vetted and located across the country to accommodate different time zones and student schedules.
Randy Jensen, American Falls superintendent who also serves as chairperson of the Idaho Digital Learning Alliance Board of Directors, spearheaded the effort to get the service in his district’s schools.
The district made Paper available to its students in grades eight through 12 at the beginning of the current school year. It cost the American Falls district about $30,000 for a year, according to Jensen, who called the investment “pretty valuable.”
Jensen said many students often find themselves doing their homework late at night when their teachers, parents or whoever typically helps them with school work is not available to answer their questions. It was important to him to broaden his students’ available resources for this reason, and because schooling and the way kids learn is evolving.
“That’s what kids do today. They are very comfortable texting questions,” the superintendent said. “We’ve found that they prefer getting text help over phone or video call help.”
The program works through the schools’ online class scheduling system, where students can click on the class in which they need help and reach a tutor for that subject. If it’s math, they can text a tutor the exact math problem they’re working on and get help with it. If it’s a writing assignment, students can send a draft of their paper to a tutor who will give them feedback.
“We want to utilize technology. We need to utilize technology,” Jensen said. “I don’t think it’s ever going to replace school. I mean, kids need to be at school, they need to be interacting in school, but this just provides good help for our students. Quite often students need help but they’re afraid to ask for it and so hopefully this kind of bridges that gap for a lot of students.”
In terms of how the tutoring service has impacted American Falls students, Jensen said it’s too early to say, though the district has gotten good feedback from its students and teachers.
“At this point, it’s pretty new for us, so we’re really just utilizing it and we’ll continue to monitor the numbers as to how many kids are using the program, how often they’re using it and whether it’s been successful,” Jensen said. “If three, four months into this it’s working really well and the kids are using it a lot, I think other Idaho school districts will look into using it too.”