Online Vs Offline Math Classes. Which is better?

1. 4 to 12 years old children require a lot more one-to-one attention and support. Often they won’t voluntarily sit and learn for more than a few minutes. So a one-to-one teacher-student arrangement is needed to encourage and motivate children. The teacher’s role is to drive effort. In both online and offline classes, teachers actually focus on them, work best for such children.
2. Around age 13, children can learn independently. They understand the seriousness of studies and can stick to a schedule that has been defined for them. So these children can log in and connect with the best teachers online.
3. Regardless of the age of the student, it is an established fact that the student will get the best quality teachers online and they would save a lot of time and energy of travel.

After this, other factors need to be considered. Centre-based classes often require parents to make pick-up and drop arrangements. Having a centre that is walking distance from your home makes the logistics significantly easier to manage but that most of the time results in getting a teacher which is not up to the mark. Else, you may have to opt for online classes.

2. The student-teacher interaction variation

Regardless of your choice between online vs offline centre-based math classes, the presence of a teacher is very important for children between 4 and 16 years of age. Any learning system that does away with a teacher for this age group is simply ineffective. The student-teacher relationship is a strong indicator of student learning outcomes.

In a centre-based math class, the teacher’s presence helps children concentrate and work for a longer duration. Most 4 to 12-year-olds left to themselves will not opt to study. Thus the teacher’s role is to make the class engaging and encourage children to put in the effort. At this age, children must do hands-on activities to learn well. The presence of a teacher again helps facilitate such learning activities.

In an online class, when a teacher is present, students have to log-in as per schedule. This discipline ensures the regularity of learning. Also, if the teacher conducts engaging activities, a learning efficiency more or less equal to offline mode can be achieved. Thus an online program must also require students to learn by reasoning, and work on math problems by themselves with a teacher monitoring their progress.

Regardless of offline vs online, Math must be learned by reasoning- Learning math the right way from an early age is important.

1. Math must be learned by reasoning, doing and discovering.
2. The teacher needs to be a coach and mentor helping students out, but not giving the answers away.
3. Children must not feel like they are being judged if they make a mistake.
4. Children should focus on the process than the result.

Furthermore, at Cuemath we understand each child and build a personalized learning plan.

1. If the student is well ahead of grade, they’ll move quickly through the topics, do advanced problems and move to the next grade!
2. If we sense that a student has learning gaps from some previous topics, we first work on those and then proceed. This is what allows us to consistently deliver learning outcomes.