Online tutoring will now be available to students all hours of the day through Canvas in an effort to make tutoring more accessible to all students.

“So if someone wanted tutoring at 2 a.m., because as we know sometimes students are up at 2 a.m., now there’s tutoring that can happen,” said faculty tutoring coordinator, professor Katy Agnost.

The online tutoring is being offered through a company called NetTutor, accessible through Canvas.

“Students who were taking online classes didn’t have access to tutoring unless they came to campus. So the online tutoring is first a way to give students in online classes an equal opportunity to get tutoring,” said Agnost.

Agnost added that it is also an effort to make tutoring more accessible to students with busy schedules.

“Also we have a lot of students who work or have really busy schedules outside of classes and so they arrange their schedule so they’re at DVC for their classes and then they can’t stay to get extra help so this was designed to give those students access to tutoring too,” said Agnost.

Matthew Denny, a communications major and a working student who has used tutoring on campus before, says NetTutor would “definitely be helpful.”

Students can use NetTutor by clicking on any one of their courses in Canvas.

“It doesn’t have to be the course you want tutoring in, it just has to be a course. Once you’re inside that course, on the left-hand navigation right below where it says DVC library,  you’ll find the tab that says NetTutor and when you click on that you’re in. And because it’s through canvas you’re already authenticated as a DVC student and that’s how you get access,” said Agnost.

NetTutor offers more subjects than what is available on campus currently, “So that’s the other benefit to this, there are some areas that don’t have tutoring here at DVC right now and now they do have it online which is great, for example, psychology or communications,” said Agnost.

While this program is being piloted students will receive five free hours or 300 minutes on NetTutor.

On NetTutor students can live chat with tutors through messenger, voice chat or video chat, “depending on what the student has and is comfortable with and there’s also a paper drop off for students who don’t have time to live chat or maybe the technology is a little confusing; they can drop off a paper for review and get feedback,” says Agnost.

Brendan Sullivan, a history major said, “I think this could be a game changer if a student isn’t doing well and they benefit from this and get good feedback, they could gain a lot more confidence to do well in school.”

Sullivan gets tutoring and utilizes office hours for all of his classes and says, “I feel more comfortable in the class and my teachers can see I am putting forth an effort to learn.”

Agnost also encourages students to use all of their resources for tutoring here on campus, “Try the online or go to the tutoring lab in your area because it does really help. Part of what tutoring does is foster independent learning.”

Agnost also hopes students who have not yet tried tutoring on campus will feel now more comfortable doing so after finding success with NetTutor.

“(Students) don’t just get help on that immediate assignment but they learn how to do it on their own. It’s empowering to succeed in a class and the idea of tutoring is to empower students to be successful,” said Agnost.