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The Daily OrangeOnline company connects students with international tutors
By Caitlin Dewey
Posted: 3/19/08, 12:29 AM EST Section: News
Thanks to uProdigy, students have an alternative to the standard tutoring services offered on campus - they can now learn from Ph.D.s living more than 7,000 miles away.
The new service, the brainchild of Harvard grad student Syed Adil Hussain, provides 24-hour access to online tutors in South Asia and claims to be an affordable, convenient alternative to in-person tutoring.
"Usually when you want a tutor, you'll go to the math department and look for fliers on the walls," Hussain said. "You don't really know the tutor's qualifications or availability, and if you have a math test the next week, you're screwed. With uProdigy, all of the tutors have Ph.D.s or master's degrees, and they're available all the time."
Students can register on uProdigy's Web site and pay $15 an hour for live online tutoring, paper editing and homework help. Their questions are outsourced to India and Southeast Asia, where tutors must pass a series of standardized tests and interviews before working for the site.
Some faculty, however, remain a little wary.
"I see one big problem," said David Robinson, a professor of geology with a research interest in the Internet. "To what extent do these people know the course content? I don't think the actual medium is a problem, but I wonder about the knowledge base."
Jason Luther, Writing Center coordinator, also has concerns. He said editing services like uProdigy's Online Writing Lab can be valuable, but the learning process is more important.
"Our mission is not just getting an A on a paper," Luther said. "We work with the writer, not the writing. This service sounds like a once-over - what you lose is that one-to-one dialog."
Freshman Raymond Lapena and sophomore Caleb Sheldon echoed these concerns.
"I need to be physically one-on-one with [a tutor]," said Lapena, a public communications major. "There's a limited amount of information you can transfer on something like AIM - you can't just whip out a textbook."
The new service, the brainchild of Harvard grad student Syed Adil Hussain, provides 24-hour access to online tutors in South Asia and claims to be an affordable, convenient alternative to in-person tutoring.
"Usually when you want a tutor, you'll go to the math department and look for fliers on the walls," Hussain said. "You don't really know the tutor's qualifications or availability, and if you have a math test the next week, you're screwed. With uProdigy, all of the tutors have Ph.D.s or master's degrees, and they're available all the time."
Students can register on uProdigy's Web site and pay $15 an hour for live online tutoring, paper editing and homework help. Their questions are outsourced to India and Southeast Asia, where tutors must pass a series of standardized tests and interviews before working for the site.
Some faculty, however, remain a little wary.
"I see one big problem," said David Robinson, a professor of geology with a research interest in the Internet. "To what extent do these people know the course content? I don't think the actual medium is a problem, but I wonder about the knowledge base."
Jason Luther, Writing Center coordinator, also has concerns. He said editing services like uProdigy's Online Writing Lab can be valuable, but the learning process is more important.
"Our mission is not just getting an A on a paper," Luther said. "We work with the writer, not the writing. This service sounds like a once-over - what you lose is that one-to-one dialog."
Freshman Raymond Lapena and sophomore Caleb Sheldon echoed these concerns.
"I need to be physically one-on-one with [a tutor]," said Lapena, a public communications major. "There's a limited amount of information you can transfer on something like AIM - you can't just whip out a textbook."
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