Online or In-Person Tutoring for HSC Economics?

All of our tutoring at Crown Economics runs online, so we've thought about this question more than most. Online tutoring suits most HSC Economics students well, and Economics suits it better than many subjects. But it doesn't suit everyone, and the students it doesn't suit are usually easy to spot in advance.

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What online does better

You can choose your tutor from anywhere. In-person tutoring limits you to whoever teaches within reach of your home or school. Online, a student in Wollongong or Dubbo can learn from the same Economics specialist as a student in the city. For a subject with a small, specialist cohort, that's a big difference.

There's no travel. A one-hour lesson at a tutoring centre can easily take two hours once you count getting there and back. Across a year of weekly lessons, that's a lot of Year 12 evenings.

Classes can be recorded. Missing a week of in-person tutoring usually means missing the content. With recordings, you watch it later, and you can rewatch the explanation of a topic you found hard just before an assessment.

Essays move faster. Submitting an essay through a portal and getting it back marked within a day or two is simpler than handing over paper at the next lesson and waiting a week.

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What in-person does better

Some students concentrate better in a room. At home, the phone, the second screen and the kitchen are all within reach. Students who struggle to focus during online school will probably struggle with online tutoring too.

Body language is easier to read. An experienced tutor in the room can see a student getting lost before they say anything. Online, that takes more effort from both sides, especially if the student's camera is off.

It's a clear break from home. For some students, going somewhere else to study is what makes it feel like study.

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Economics in particular

A few features of Economics make it work well online.

Diagrams are the obvious concern, and the answer is a good digital whiteboard. Our tutors draw diagrams live on an interactive whiteboard over Zoom, step by step, the same way they would on a classroom whiteboard, and the class recording keeps the whole drawing so you can go back to it.

Contemporary data lives online anyway. Half of preparing for Economics is following RBA decisions and ABS releases, and it's easy to pull up this month's figures during an online lesson.

The one thing to watch is handwriting. The HSC exam is handwritten, and if all your practice essays are typed for online marking, your first three-hour handwritten paper will come as a shock. Write most practice essays by hand, timed, even if you're tutored online.

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Who should choose which

Online usually suits students who are reasonably self-motivated, who want a specialist rather than whoever is local, who live outside the city or have a busy schedule, and who want recordings to revise from.

In-person usually suits students who find it hard to focus at home, who already struggled with online learning at school, or who simply prefer a separate place to study.

If you're unsure, try one online class before deciding. Most students know within an hour whether the format works for them.

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Making online tutoring work

Keep your camera on. It makes it easier for the tutor to see when you're lost, and harder for you to drift off.

Use a laptop or desktop, not a phone. Diagrams and documents are hard to follow on a small screen.

Sit somewhere quiet, at a desk, with the phone in another room.

Have paper ready and draw the diagrams yourself as the tutor draws them. Copying them later from the recording is much less effective.

Ask questions out loud or in the chat. Online classes reward students who speak up, because the tutor can't always tell from your face that you're confused.

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How it works at Crown Economics

Every group class and one-to-one session runs on Zoom with an interactive whiteboard. Group classes are capped at 6 students, and every class is recorded and uploaded to the student portal within 24 hours. Essays are submitted through the portal and marked against the HSC criteria, with feedback back within 48 hours (24 hours for one-to-one students).

If online isn't for you, we're not the right fit, and our comparison of tutoring options covers the alternatives. If you'd like to see whether it works for you, book a trial class.