CEOTutor

New Leadership for Tutor.com

2013-04-18T09:07:00.001-04:00

In January, I shared that Tutor.com had been acquired by IAC, a leading media and Internet company. Since then we’ve been thinking about how to grow our business and ensure that more students of every age will have access to the on-demand, personalized tutoring services they need.

To help us achieve this goal, I’m excited to welcome two new senior leaders to Tutor.com. We are announcing today that Mandy Ginsberg is joining Tutor.com as our new CEO and Sharmistha Dubey will lead our product and technology strategy. Mandy and Shar are both coming to Tutor.com from Match.com, a successful IAC company. I will remain as Founder and Chairman and work with Mandy and Shar to help deliver on our long-term vision for creating the highest quality and most personalized learning solutions for our clients.

Mandy was most recently the CEO of Match.com, which she and Shar built into the preeminent online dating company over the past five years by understanding what their customers needed and delivering innovative services across multiple technology platforms. Both Mandy and Shar are parents and they understand the frustrations and emotions that come with supporting our children through every level of school, from Kindergarten through college graduation. We’re excited to have them listen to our customers and bring their insights as parents and technology leaders to the education challenges that today’s students are facing every day – tougher coursework, intense standardized exams and more challenging college admissions.

I’ve fielded many questions over the last few months about how Tutor.com will remain the leading online tutoring company for institutions such as colleges, schools, libraries, and the Department of Defense, while also growing our consumer subscription business. The answer is, by bringing on and nurturing great people who are dedicated to solving our clients’ problems. Along with our new leadership, I’m excited to share that

Sandi White, who has been with Tutor.com for more than a decade, is now the General Manager, Institutions
Susan DelRosario, who has also been with us for a decade is now Director, Libraries
Jim Barnes, who has been with us more than a year, is now Vice President, Higher Ed and K-12 Sales

These veteran leaders will be focused on solving our institutional clients’ challenges, whether it’s helping our college clients retain and graduate more of their students, or building stronger community programming for our public library clients.

Exciting days ahead for Tutor.com. I hope you’ll follow our progress through Twitter or Facebook, and you can always email me at gcigale@tutor.com with ideas and suggestions.

George Cigale

Founder and Chairman, Tutor.com

gcigale@tutor.com

IAC Acquires Tutor.com

2013-01-07T09:04:00.000-05:00

I am excited to share that IAC/InterActiveCorp has acquired Tutor.com. IAC owns more than 50 successful Internet businesses, including Newsweek, Ask.com, About.com, Match.com and Dictionary.com. As an IAC company, Tutor.com will have the opportunity to innovate and meet our customers’ needs like never before, while maintaining our devotion to the highest quality learning for the students who have come to rely on us every day. Our team and I are looking forward to this next stage in Tutor.com’s growth and evolution. More on the acquisition in this press release and in a New York Times article today.

Back in 1998, I founded Tutor.com because I thought the Internet would revolutionize the way we learn. While other companies were putting courses and content online and adapting their software products, I thought we should focus on the best way to learn -- from another expert human being in a one-to-one setting, at the moment you need help. The Internet could help connect experienced tutors and teachers to all types of learners, in a way that was never possible before. By 2000, my small team had created what would be one of the first interactive, online classrooms. With a few dozen experienced tutors, we were open for business.

Twelve years later, millions of students credit Tutor.com for their academic success. We now work with over 2,500 experienced tutors, professional teaching coaches, and credentialed librarians who work from all over North America. Our tutoring, homework help, reference, career and professional development services are offered through colleges and universities, public libraries, public school districts, virtual and charter schools, corporations and the U.S. Department of Defense.

2012 was a great year for Tutor.com. We completed over 1.3 million one-to-one learning sessions. Our tutors served about half a million hours of personalized learning. As my data-driven team noted, there are 8,760 hours in a year, so we served over 57 years of help in 2012. And we received our best ever ratings from students – an average of 4.6 out of 5 for excellent tutoring, and a 96% average recommend rate in post-session surveys.

Among our many success stories in 2012 -- students who failed seventh grade algebra took it for the second time with Tutor.com and earned the highest grade in the class; students in the Red Clay School District earned almost a full point higher on their AP exams when using Tutor.com. Older students returning to college passed their challenging writing courses and had the confidence to stay in school; and thousands of middle school and high school students with military parents deployed overseas had one less thing to worry about by connecting to our tutors for help 24/7. These are just a few examples of how having access to an experienced expert when you need help is changing lives for the better.

We have so much more to accomplish in the coming years. I still believe, more than ever, that personalized learning through a one-to-one immediate connection to a tutor, is the best way to overcome a learning challenge. Tutor.com is for everyone, and should be available to everyone, because every learner experiences an obstacle at some point and gets stuck. Help should be easy to get, before it leads to frustration, loss of confidence, and bad grades.

Unfortunately, most of our schools, universities and home lives are not set up to provide help when you need it. Too many students find themselves frustrated, failing and giving up. And the stakes are only getting bigger. As a professional educator and father of three, I know that obtaining a great education and the right skills for the workforce at an affordable price has become more difficult. We can change that -- one student, one question, one learning session at a time.

Our team is full of new ideas for the coming years, to drive the personalized learning revolution that we helped start over 10 years ago. As an IAC company, we will have access to more resources that can help us make these dreams into realities -- work that will help millions more students achieve their academic and career goals on their terms.

Want to keep up with what we’re doing? Follow us on Twitter or Like us on Facebook. And you can always email me at gcigale@tutor.com with ideas and suggestions.

Happy New Year,

George Cigale, Founder and CEO, Tutor.com
gcigale@tutor.com

Our Money is on the Humans, But We Need the Computers Too

2012-09-17T23:51:00.000-04:00

Last week I had the privilege to give a talk to educational leaders in Denver as part of a series sponsored by A+Denver and Summit 54. I was invited to discuss the role tutoring should have in today’s schools and classrooms. Whenever I give a talk about tutoring, it’s inevitable that I’ll mention the watershed study on the topic – Benjamin Bloom’s 1984 paper. Bloom was a professor at the University of Chicago and his research proved that one-to-on tutoring was by far the best way for students to learn. Bloom’s work was referenced prominently just this past weekend in “How Computerized Tutors areLearning to Teach Humans” in The New York Times.

Bloom’s vision was that classroom teaching would become more like one-to-one tutoring – highly personal and based on students’ individual needs. While schools are striving to create provide more differentiated instruction as part of the classroom experience, it’s an uphill battle with multiple obstacles, including classroom size, range of ability levels, and hours in the day. Chris Heffernan, the subject of the NYT article, experienced these challenges first-hand as a new, Teach for America teacher in an inner-city school. His response was to attempt to create a computer program to tutor children.

The article asserts that having a human tutor available for every child would be prohibitively expensive, while learning with the help of intelligent computer tutorials is a more viable solution. I disagree – there is no software that is anywhere close to as good as a real human tutor, and at Tutor.com we’ve figured out how to make real human tutors available at a fraction of what it used to cost in the pre-Internet Bloom days of the 1980’s.

As I shared in Denver, it’s not only possible and affordable, but it’s critical that we bring more tutoring from real people into our schools. It takes smart technology to do this efficiently and affordably.

Tutoring in the 21^st Century Classroom

Tutoring was first introduced into the public school system en masse when No Child Left Behind was passed and districts were required to offer Supplemental Education Services. This proved quickly to be the wrong way to offer tutoring. Service providers were not well monitored and there was little to no accountability. Very few SES programs offered the one-to-one tutoring from expert tutors that Bloom proved was so effective.

So what makes a tutoring program effective for school districts? These five key steps:

1. Tutor Selection – Hire experienced tutors who are experts in the subject and content they tutor. Offering online tutoring gives a district access to more talent especially in hard-to-find higher level math and science. Great tutors are excellent communicators, know how to diagnose a student’s specific issue, understand the variety of ways that students learn, and help students build confidence and take responsibility for their own learning.

2. Student Access - Tutoring no longer has to take place for an hour after-school. Online tutoring offers far more flexibility and access points. Students can connect for one-to-one instruction during the school day, in the afternoon or later in the evening from any device that is connected to the Internet. Schools need to decide if the tutoring should be offered on-demand to be available whenever a student wants help or offer scheduled sessions. On-demand access allows students to get help them minute they need it, and more fully participate in their learning.

3. Clear and Thoughtful Expectations – Set clear goals for any tutoring program and identify which students will receive the tutoring and for what purpose. Every student can benefit from tutoring, from remedial needs to advanced and challenging coursework, and all situations in between. Requiring tutoring for just remedial students creates a stigma and feels like a demotivating punishment.

4. Measurement and Feedback – Schools should use student and teacher feedback to understand how a program is working. Are students coming to school better prepared and with assignments completed as a result of the tutoring? Do tutoring analysis reports show trends in what students are missing in class? Student feedback at the end of a tutoring session provides additional insights into how they are doing and why they may be struggling. Tutors’ performance should also be measured by having tutor supervisors review the recorded sessions and students’ ratings and feedback. This keeps the quality of the tutoring consistently high over the school year.

5. Teacher Support - The information collected from tutoring sessions can help teachers understand where to spend the most classroom time and have additional insights into their students’challenges. And this information can be used to recommend additional coaching and professional development for teachers (see www.mylivepd.com).

We are happy to share examples of schools that are offering tutoring programs the right way. One innovative program, School of One in New York City (now expanding as New Classrooms in 3 additional districts) uses Tutor.com as their tutoring partner to offer highly personalized, one-to-one learning to students throughout the school year.

While self-paced tutorial software and artificial intelligence has a place in the classroom, it can’t come close to replacing an experienced real human tutor. Motivation is a key piece of the achievement puzzle and we find that students are most motivated by positive, confidence building experiences with other people (face to face or through online interactions). Online on-demand tutoring brings the best of technology and the best of live human instruction together into students’ classrooms and homes in a way that is sustainable, affordable and measurable.

Maybe in 100 years, computer power and software coding will evolve to create an artificial tutor as good as a great human tutor, but until then, human tutors will dominate and students will benefit.

George Cigale

gcigale@tutor.com

Revolution in Higher Education

2012-07-17T11:35:00.000-04:00

Good summary article in The New York Times today, about Coursera's expansion. Free online courses from some of the best minds at our elite universities, open to anyone.

Joining the initial group (Michigan, Princeton, Stanford, and UPenn), are California Institute of Technology, Duke University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Rice University, University of California San Francisco, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Washington, University of Virginia, University of Edinburgh in Scotland, University of Toronto and EPF Lausanne. Some are even starting to offer credits for completion.

Really exciting stuff, even though there's lots to figure out before this goes mainstream and success can be declared for this new model of higher education:

-- Who is going to pay for professor's time, building and maintaining of the technology... overall, what's the business model that will generate sufficient revenues (or any revenues right now) to pay for the costs of these courses.

-- If credits are going to be offered, how to prevent cheating on exams, papers.

-- What needs to be improved in the student and instructor online experiences.

-- How to get the completion rate for students to a decent level. Will students need more support, like peer to peer study groups and tutoring?

-- What effect this will have on our great research universities, including established systems like tenure.

At Tutor.com, we're thinking hard about how our software platform and know-how in providing academic support and coaching can contribute to these efforts. On a personal level, I'm looking forward to starting and completing the Introduction to Genome Science course offered on Coursera by University of Pennsylvania faculty. No doubt I'll be learning a great deal,

George Cigale
gcigale@tutor.com

Bear Citing or Sighting, by Middle School Educators

2012-06-13T13:26:00.000-04:00

Got an automated call this morning from the Principal of our middle school, informing parents that a bear was spotted outside the school, so they're cancelling after-school activities. I guess a prudent action, given we're in the suburbs of NYC and not in Montana.

But then I got this follow-up email (pasted below in full), making a weird bear announcement situation a little weirder and sadly funny. Maybe I'm too much of a stickler for using language properly, but I guess I expect our educators to use language more carefully.

Unless, of course, this baby bear has just been quoted for saying something special, or the bear was issued a summons to appear in court?

*********************

Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2012 12:50 PM
To: George Cigale
Subject: bear citing

A message from Wampus School

Good Afternoon,

A baby bear has been cited on the grounds of both Wampus and HCC. We were advised by the North Castle Police Department to have everyone remain indoors. Parents of walkers have been notified to arrange for their children to be picked up and there are no after school activities for either campus this afternoon.

Thank you.

To listen to the above message, you will need audio software and speakers on your computer.

This e-mail has been sent to you by Wampus School. To maximize their communication with you, you may be receiving this e-mail in addition to a phone call with the same message. If you wish to discontinue this service, please inform Wampus School IN PERSON, by US MAIL, or by TELEPHONE at (914) 273-4190.

**********************
George Cigale
gcigale@tutor.com

“Evil Vegetables?” (and other harmful headlines like “Tutoring Doesn’t Work”)

2012-06-06T10:59:00.002-04:00

If you’ve read the screaming headlines lately such as “Duncan to Florida: Tutoring Doesn’t Work” in Education Week, and similar articles in local papers across the country, you might believe that the Secretary of Education thinks that tutoring doesn’t work. I don’t think that’s true. Secretary Duncan is actually questioning if tutoring done under the convoluted regulations of the Supplemental Educational Services (SES) provisions of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is working. And he’s absolutely right, it isn’t working.

I’m a fan of Arne Duncan and this administration’s efforts to reform our education system. Programs like Race to the Top are forcing everyone involved, including public schools, teachers, charter school operators and ed tech innovators —to re-think how we should work together to create the right solutions for achieving better results. Students need us adults to figure out some tough issues right now, or we will continue down our current path of unacceptable numbers of students who are unprepared for college or careers in this economy.

Focused and personalized attention from a thoughtful educator (a.k.a. Tutoring) is an important part of those solutions. Giving students the opportunity to work one-to-one with a high-quality tutor is one of the few strategies that a significant body of research has proven that it works. Search for and read the often-cited work by Benjamin Bloom in 1984 at University of Chicago and Northwestern University. And read the more recent work in 2011 by Harvard Professor and Economist Roland Fryer in the Houston schools. The most thorough studies conclude that tutoring is highly effective, when done right. (Happy to email the full papers to you if you ask, gcigale@tutor.com).

More affluent parents don’t need research studies to know that tutoring works. These families spend an estimated $5 Billion annually on tutoring and test prep, often paying over $100 per hour for the highest quality. Unfortunately, that’s not the quality and results that less affluent students are getting when they receive SES tutoring in local school districts, even though the cost is very high.

Having students sit in a school room for a group tutoring session doesn’t mean they are learning. There are many more ways to do tutoring poorly than well, and SES created a structure and set of incentives for finding lots of ways to do it poorly while allowing the companies (and some districts) that provide it to reap financial rewards. I can write at length about those details, but common sense says tutors need to be able to focus on student needs; tutors need to have timely information about student weaknesses; tutors need to be held accountable for student improvement; students need to want to be there…

Duncan and his team have seen enough and read enough evaluations of SES tutoring to conclude that there are better ways to achieve results. The headlines, and stories are wrong – we need to invest more in the types of tutoring that do work, and Duncan’s team knows it. I’m trying not to be defensive or self-serving, but having education publications screaming that “Tutoring Doesn’t Work” is like writing “College Isn’t Worth It” when some higher ed models are implemented poorly, or health magazines writing “Evil Vegetables?” when over-use of pesticides is causing health problems. Such headlines and stories are intellectually lazy and do a great deal of harm, especially when they are reprinted and quoted widely in local papers.

I founded a 24/7 online tutoring service over a decade ago. I know from firsthand experience that providing students with access to one-to-one help from experienced, expert tutors does indeed work.

While I write this, several thousand students from across the country are working with a Tutor.com tutor, in real-time in our online classroom. I can see in the queue of requests from students that there’s algebra (lots of them), chemistry, physics, calculus and writing questions directly tied to the work students are doing in school. A key part of our formula for great tutoring is that no reservations or appointments are ever needed – students get help the minute they need it, just as they are experiencing a need and are motivated to overcome the challenge.

On average, our students spend about 20-30 minutes with the tutor, getting the tutor’s complete undivided attention. At the end students complete an evaluation of their experience. We record and save every session, and the content is compiled into in-depth reports for the schools and other institutions that pay for the tutoring. Complete transparency and accountability.

We know, after completing more than 8 million one-to-one on-demand sessions, that more than 90% of the students report they are more confident in school, completing more assignments and improving their grades. In 2009 we asked more than 1,000 students their attitudes toward tutoring and achievement. Here’s what they said:

Ø 86% of student respondents say they would be more likely to take an AP Course if they knew that an expert subject tutor was available to help them online, 24/7, one-to-one, and on-demand, any time they get stuck.

Ø 96% of student respondents say they believe that having an online tutor available whenever they need help would result in them being more ready for college.

But don’t just trust our statistics – read Bloom’s and Fryer’s thoughtful studies about tutoring. Any self-respecting educator and researcher knows that tutoring works well when it’s done right. Interestingly, both Bloom and Fryer (almost 30 years apart in their research), conclude that we need to find more cost-effective ways to deliver tutoring. Well, at Tutor.com, we think we’ve done that by using technology in a smart way, and I’m sure we are not alone.

U.S. students need more access to high quality tutoring, not less, and we need to learn from recent innovations and replicate these success models. Maybe not as simple and easy to write, but I’ll be working towards that headline.

George Cigale
gcigale@tutor.com

Gut Feelings -- Science, Yogurt, and Stress

2012-05-21T08:24:00.000-04:00

Got genuinely excited last week when this month's Scientific American magazine showed up in my mailbox, and the cover was a picture of a human body full of microbes. The cover article is, "Your Inner Ecosystem: In your body bacteria outnumber your own cells 10 to 1. Who's in control?"

Why the excitement? To the dismay of my kids (ages 10-15) on long car rides and over several dinner talks over the past few months, I've been sharing stories from recently published research about beneficial bacteria inside of us and other creatures. Mostly research on mice and fruit flies, but all with fascinating possible implications on human digestion, obesity, cancers, stress management, mate selection, and overall behavior and evolution.

A sampling below of my recent readings and podcasts on this topic, that brought on these lectures that brought on my interest in learning more about gut bacteria, and talking about :

-- My favorite one: lab mice with rich yogurt diets (live yogurt bacteria) manage stressful situations (being dropped in a bowl of water) much better than mice with normal diets, by continuing to persevere, looking for an answer to their bad situation far longer and with less panic than their yogurt-less peers. But if the nerve that communicates between stomach and brain is cut, then both groups of mice are equally panicky. Likely conclusion: helpful bacteria introduced into mice guts from yogurt diets help mice brains by telling the endocrine system to release calming chemicals into the blood stream. Link her to the RadioLab Podcast.

-- A fruit fly likes to select a mate who has a similar diet, more often than not. If you dose the fruit flies with antibiotics, fruit flies start mating randomly, no longer expressing a preference for mates with similar diets. Likely conclusion: Gut bacteria in fruit flies help to process food, and that processing releases pheromones that attract mates. Different pheromones from different foods. When the bacteria are killed by antibiotics, that whole process is changed. Link to a brief article, without the antibiotic stuff – I read that somewhere else.

-- And mice with yogurt diets in a lab have shinier fur, mate more often, and produce more and healthier offspring.

The Scientific American cover article, written by Jennifer Ackerman, does a great job of introducing the concept of how we’ve evolved to work with the bacteria inside of us on a cellular level. In many cases, the bacteria perform vital tasks for us, and scientists are just now discovering that even bacteria previously thought to be only harmful (e.g. H Pylori causing ulcers) are actually needed (H. Pylori helps us regulate how much we eat).

Snippet from the article: “Bacterial cells in the body outnumber human cells by a factor of 10 to 1. Yet only recently have researchers begun to elucidate the beneficial roles these microbes play in fostering health. Some of these bacteria possess genes that encode for beneficial compounds that the body cannot make on its own. Other bacteria seem to train the body not to overreact to outside threats. Advances in computing and gene sequencing are allowing investigators to create a detailed catalogue of all the bacterial genes that make up this so-called microbiome. Unfortunately, the inadvertent destruction of beneficial microbes by the use of antibiotics, among other things, may be leading to an increase in autoimmune disorders and obesity.“ Really worth picking up the magazine or subscribing to the digital edition to read the whole article.

To this reader and student of science and learning, seems clear that we are just starting to understand what we don’t know about how we work with the bacteria we host. Lots of study and research needed to learn what our decades-long battle against harmful bacteria (from a long list of life-saving antibiotics) has caused to our relationship with beneficial bacteria that we need to regulate our bodies and minds.

Either way, I’m going to finish this bowl of yogurt this morning (containing at least 5 live bacteria cultures, L. Bulgaricus, S. Thermophilus, BB-12, L. Adicophilus, and L. Casei)) and plan to ingest some nearly every day, with fruit and granola.

George Cigale

gcigale@tutor.com

Future of Teacher Support and PD

2011-09-11T11:49:00.003-04:00

Great commentary by Alvin Crawford of KDSI on the future of professional development and support for K12 teachers, , in Education Week at http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/09/09/03crawford.h31.html?r=542833189 . Full text below...

Published Online: September 9, 2011
Education Week Commentary
Bringing Professional Development Into the 21st Century
By Alvin H. Crawford

Our school systems are broken, but everyone seems to have his or her favorite villain rather than a strategic approach to producing positive student outcomes. Unions, teachers, districts, parents, politics, school choice, and competition all play a role, but the blame game doesn’t address the core problem. Here’s the reality: If we fix public education, every child will have an opportunity to break the cycle of poverty, and the United States will have an opportunity to play a role in the global knowledge economy. The challenge is determining the real source of the problem and providing a solution that works for every school in the nation. And those are no small tasks.

Research suggests the problems lie not with the students but with the adults. Teacher-performance research clearly illustrates we have a teaching problem in school districts. It suggests the quality of a classroom teacher is the single most important element in a child’s success. Given such data, one might conclude there are more suboptimal teachers than great ones. But let’s not immediately point fingers at teachers. Arguably, most enter the profession hoping to have an impact on children, yet a third leave after three years, and 50 percent after five years. The heart of the problem is that there are too many poorly trained administrators, principals, and teachers. In most industries, people are considered the most important asset, and corporate leaders ensure they are trained to do their jobs effectively. Public schools should be no different.

However, most foundations and policymakers have focused on accountability and evaluation rather than training. The assumption: If we measure teachers more effectively, we can get rid of the bad ones. The problem is too deep and systemic, though. In short, we cannot fire or hire our way out of this problem. The statistics suggest that if we develop a support system for principals and teachers to train them effectively, we will change education culture, retain new educators more effectively, enhance the performance of existing staff members, and identify those who, despite effective training, can’t meet standards and should pursue other careers.

According to several studies, school districts spend more than $10,000 on teacher professional development per teacher, per year. The number is startling and, in most cases, represents an amount far greater than any district budgets or believes it spends. In most instances, staff development is funded through a combination of federal funds (Titles I, II, III, and IV, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), several district-level departmental budgets (curriculum and instruction, accountability, professional development, and human resources), and school-level budgets. In most instances, no centralized accounting exists for those dollars, either in how they’re spent or their overall impact.

"In most industries, people are considered the most important asset, and corporate leaders ensure they are trained to do their jobs effectively. Public schools should be no different."
But the body of research reveals that staff-development costs, including central-office and local staff, hours of teacher time, stipends, salary increases, substitutes, facilities, instructors, and material expenditures hover in the range of $8,000 to $16,000 per teacher, per year, especially in larger districts. Most districts have no idea they spend that much on staff development. Sadly though, most administrators agree their professional-development outlay has no correlation with student-achievement results.

The $10,000-per-teacher cost could be justified if a significant change in teacher practice or student achievement were the result. But most professional development today lacks alignment to student-achievement needs, fidelity of implementation, and scale or reach. Professional-development days are historically spread throughout the year and delivered by internal resources through one-day trainings with little or no follow-up. In most cases, the inch-deep and train-the-trainer approaches to professional development won’t transform practice.

Scaling effective practice is also a significant issue. Most training takes place outside the classroom, an arrangement that requires coordination of days, substitutes, trainers, and facilities. This means many initiatives take six to eight years to reach all teachers in a given school or district, creating isolated pockets of knowledge but no systemic change in overall teacher practice. Research should dictate the model and methods for training all employees, but curiously, over 15 years ago, the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, or CPRE, wrote a report on professional development that largely echoes the same problems we have today: lack of alignment, fidelity, and scale.

There is a “paucity” of solid research on the impact of professional development on student achievement, the U.S. Department of Education has found. In reviewing 1,300 studies on the subject, the department found that only nine of them met What Works Clearinghouse standards for research. However, the nine studies agreed that “teachers who receive substantial professional development” can raise student achievement “by about 21 percentile points.” A report by the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education concluded that to be effective, professional development must be focused, engaging, intensive, linked to student learning, supported with coaching, and integrated with other school initiatives, and continuous for “an average of about 50 hours or more on a given topic.”

Given the challenges and the evidence, how do we deliver effective professional development to teachers in a way that aligns to strategic objectives, provides the fidelity and rigor required to change instructional practice, and offers the scale required to address the needs of more than 50 million students?

The only effective way to scale professional development is to leverage online learning. Online professional development can deliver dozens of hours to teachers within eight weeks and includes collaborative learning environments supported effectively by coaching, modeling, mentoring, observation, and feedback. Online professional development works because it reduces travel costs and coordination, minimizes time out of the classroom, and allows educators to learn at their own pace. In fact, research suggests that online learning happens faster than face-to-face learning, with increased retention of the material.

Online professional development engages educators in high-quality learning by adhering to best practices in adult learning. It promotes differentiated coursework while enabling teachers to engage collaboratively with colleagues who share their learning needs. By delivering effective, differentiated online professional development, districts leverage the powerful advantages of technology and the online-learning environment. Districts delivering online professional development realize cost savings, scale critical instructional practices, differentiate teacher learning, advance strategic human-capital management, maintain intentional fidelity, and transform teaching.

Building educator capacity this way allows districts to focus on fixing the problems, immediately. Imagine if a district could effectively train 5,000 teachers in the common-core curriculum, differentiated instruction, cultural competency, effective teaching, instruction of English-language learners, formative assessment, and highly engaging classroom practice. Those courses could be delivered in less than six months to all teachers by the nation’s leading practitioners, with research-proven practice.

Imagine the dialogue. Imagine the engagement when principals, teachers, and coaches go about their work. There would be a common language and culture focused on addressing the problems. There would be a support system to help transform learning into practice. There would be a way to evaluate whether teachers who receive training and face-to-face support can meet the demands of rigorous instruction through end-of-year evaluations. And there would be transformational improvement in the ability of teachers to meet the needs of their students.
It’s time to take action and invest in developing our educators to meet the needs of 21st-century students by becoming 21st-century teachers. We can solve this problem by focusing our efforts, our investments, and our school districts on building capacity through online professional development.

MyLivePD Launches -- On Demand Help for Teachers

2011-09-07T10:25:00.012-04:00

Less than a year ago, I wrote about a $1.8MM grant that Tutor.com received from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create a new service for teachers: http://ceotutor.blogspot.com/2010/11/gates-foundation-awards-grant-to.html.

Vision: Make it possible for a teacher to get help the minute it's needed, from an experienced coach who can provide a helpful resource, help with content or instructional approaches, or classroom dynamics coaching. No reservations or appointments ever needed, and always live and one-to-one. On the teacher's schedule, as often as needed, in a confidential safe zone. What Tutor.com has provided to almost 7 million students over the past 10 years, now enhanced and adapted for teachers.

Today, we announced the launch of MyLivePD, the service created as a result of that grant. You can read more about the project at the press release sent out today: http://www.tutor.com/press/press-releases-2011/20110907. You can also visit http://www.mylivepd.com/ to watch a demo video or to get on our email list.

During this pilot project, we're partnering with 3 school districts (Hillsborough County, Baltimore County, and Tucson Unified) and 4 Teach for America regions, as well as several resource providers that are mentioned in the press release.

The pilot will be evaluated by a third-party researcher contracted by the Gates Foundation, and Tutor.com does plan to offer the service to other school districts and charter schools in the coming months.

We are very excited to be working with teachers, providing the support teachers need to deliver great lessons every day. Contact me if you have any questions or suggestions,

George Cigale
gcigale@tutor.com

Johns Hopkins University SOE Opinion Piece: Student Feedback

2011-05-23T10:19:00.011-04:00

Several years ago I started writing this blog with the goal of sharing news about Tutor.com and ideas that may help other entrepreneurs. It’s been a fun and productive experience for me to spend time writing here and sharing the lessons I’ve learned as a leader of a small company in an emerging market.

Over the last year, I’ve been spending more of my time deeply engaged in how Tutor.com is helping reform education by doing something very simple – listening to students and acting on their feedback. Much of this thinking has been shared in private meetings, at invitation-only events and among my staff.

Some of those ideas come to life this week in an opinion piece I was invited to write by Dean David Andrews of the Johns Hopkins University School of Education (SOE). I am the Chair of SOE’s National Advisory Council and I am incredibly impressed with Dean Andrews and his vision for educating the educators. I’m excited to work with the Dean on his agenda of real change for our future teachers.

I’m also planning some of my own changes by giving this blog a new direction and new look over the summer. I’ll begin sharing the thoughts that I merely touch upon in the SOE opinion piece around the hallmarks of Tutor.com’s approach to learning and teaching. Future blog posts will go deeper into issues such as:

· Incorporating student feedback into their own education
· Creating a student-teacher-administrator feedback loop that produces results
· Blended learning solutions that improve teacher productivity and student achievement
· Collecting, analyzing and using meaningful data in the classroom
· What students can tell us about learning

I hope you’ll continue on this journey with me and provide your feedback and thoughts as I explore these issues that are driving the direction of Tutor.com and education reform.

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

Also posting at http://blog.tutor.com/

Gates Foundation Awards Grant to Tutor.com

2010-12-07T09:00:00.003-05:00

Very exciting news and a new kind of project for us...

This week, we’re announcing that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded a grant directly to Tutor.com to develop and launch a new on-demand professional development service for teachers.

We’ll be working closely with a small number of schools where math teachers will connect to online teaching coaches for immediate on-demand help using newly developed software based on the Tutor.com platform. Our goal, shared by the Gates Foundation, is to provide motivated teachers with new ways get help when they need it, so they can be ready to teach an effective high quality lesson the next day. Really exciting stuff!

We'd like to hear from teaching coaches who are interested in working for us, and from school and district leaders who would like their schools considered as candidates for participation in the Gates project. You can sign up for updates and learn more about this project at http://www.tutor.com/ondemandpd and from the press release.

We're also hiring a project manager -- please spread the word.

George

gcigale@tutor.com

*Photo from November visit of Philadelphia's Mastery Charter School, a Gates Foundation grantee.

West Point Visit

2010-09-10T14:13:00.003-04:00

Please visit the Tutor.com Blog, which is where I posted about my recent visit to the West Point Middle School to speak with parents and students about their free online tutoring service.

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

Poets House Bridge Walk

2010-06-17T14:55:00.003-04:00

Follow this link to the Tutor.com Blog, which is where you can find this post about the Poets House Bridge Walk, and where I'll be posting most of the time.

George Cigale
gcigale@tutor.com

How to Deliver High Quality Education

2010-06-07T15:30:00.009-04:00

Last weekend, I gave a brief presentation at the National Advisory Council meeting of the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. I posted some thoughts about it at the Tutor.com blog:

http://blog.tutor.com/2010/06/how-to-deliver-high-quality-education/

Thanks for reading,

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

Guest Blogging for the USO

2010-06-04T17:02:00.003-04:00

Guest blogging today on the USO's blog and also pasted below...

Hi! I’m George Cigale, CEO and founder of Tutor.com. I’m guest blogging today at the USO to let you know about Tutor.com for Military Families, a program provided by the Department of Defense that provides one-to-one live online tutoring and career help for military families at no charge.

We understand the issues that military families face—the stress of deployments, children transferring schools mid-year, and needing help getting up to speed with local curriculum—and we are proud to support military families with 24/7 immediate access to homework help and career help that can relieve some of the stress.

And, as a working dad of three school-age children, including one who is studying Algebra this year, I know how tough it is to juggle conflicting family schedules and making sure homework gets done! It’s so important for students to have access to help when they need it, so they can get their homework done and feel confident about their progress.

Tutor.com helps the whole military family in two important ways:

Tutor.com offers K-12 and college academic help. Students connect to tutors for help with homework, projects, quizzes and essays in more than 20 subjects. Our college experts are great for military service members and spouses who are continuing their education, and because we are available 24/7, we fit into busy, hectic schedules.

Tutor.com helps service members and spouses seeking jobs and entering career transition. We have career experts who assist with everything from crafting cover letters to help pulling together a resume. We are experts in translating your valuable volunteer and service experience into the perfect resume for a competitive civilian workforce.

Every time you connect to one of our tutors or career experts, you get one-to-one attention. We’re there for you when you need us, 24/7, conveniently accessible from your home computer, and, we’re open all summer.

Active duty Army, Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy service members and their spouses and children can access the program. Go to www.tutor.com/military for more information and to get a tutor.

ADE's Digital Empowerment Summit

2010-04-28T13:43:00.005-04:00

I’ve been off my blogging game for the last couple of months. Incredibly busy, but that’s not a good enough excuse. As I return with some thoughts about an event I spoke at last week, I posted on Tutor.com’s blog first -- http://blog.tutor.com/2010/04/tutor-com-at-ades-digital-empowerment-summit/ . You may see more posts from me there instead of here, but I've pasted it here below as well…

As a young man, Julius Hollis experienced the power of access to education and tutoring. Mr. Hollis went on to become a highly successful banker and entrepreneur, and is now committing his valuable time and money to building the Alliance for Digital Equality, non-profit organization that helps bring the full power of information and education to underserved communities.
Last week, I joined ADE’s Digital Empowerment Summit as a panelist, in Newark, NJ. A thoroughly motivating day, we heard compelling appeals from current and former Mayors, business people, educators, and activists, that much more must be done to make the power of broadband more available and usable in urban communities.

Newark’s Mayor Cory Booker kicked off the summit with the story of Newark’s revival. He was followed by speeches and panel discussions featuring Shirley Franklin (a two-term Atlanta Mayor and now Senior Advisor for ADE), Manny Diaz (two terms as Miami Mayor, President of the US Conference of Mayors, and now Vice Chair of ADE), and Mignon Clyburn (Commissioner, Federal Communications Commission) among others.

The panel on which I participated was focused on wireless broadband access and its impact on education, health care, and public safety issues. Masterfully moderated by Mario Armstrong, who appears regularly on CNN and NPR as a technology expert and reporter. I made sure that the Newark and online audience (the event was broadcast live on ADE’s web site) was aware of HomeworkHelpNJ , which is a service underwritten by PSEG and Praxair, and provided by Tutor.com in partnership with the New Jersey State Library. HomeworkHelpNJ provides all students in Newark and over a dozen NJ communities with live one-to-one academic help seven days a week.

ADE’s mission to provide increased access to broadband services and infrastructure in urban underserved communities is a critical step in improving quality of life and career opportunities. Another necessary piece is the communication and training efforts that ensure that families, students, job seekers, entrepreneurs, and other members of the community are aware of and have the skills needed to take advantage of services like HomeworkHelpNJ.

Mr. Hollis’ work to create ADE’s Learning Without Walls initiative and Digital Empowerment Councils in major cities across the US is having a dramatic effect on youth and families, and we are proud to be active partners and supporters of ADE’s mission.

George Cigale, CEO and Founder, Tutor.com
gcigale@tutor.com

Online Tutoring for Military Families

2010-01-26T08:33:00.015-05:00

Finally, I can talk/write about this openly. Not exactly military top secret information, but our 24/7 online tutoring service for military families went totally public today with a press release from the Department of Defense's Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Here it is in full: http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=57732

After serving over 10,000 military family students with live, one-to-one tutoring at no charge to the student or family through our US Army and USMC programs over the past year, the Department of Defense decided to launch and expand the service for all service members and their families. We went live on January 1, 2010 at http://www.tutor.com/military.

This means that "Military service members and their dependents around the world can work with a certified, professional tutor online 24/7 to get help with homework, studying, test prep, resume writing, and more, the minute they need it, thanks to a Department of Defense (DoD) funded contract with Tutor.com. Students of any age, from kindergartners to high school seniors, as well as adult learners, may use the service to connect to an expert tutor for one-to-one help in math, science, social studies and English, as well as assistance with resume writing and interview preparation."

Here's a sample of the amazing post-session session survey comments written by military students: “This is great help for me and my brother because our dad is away and cannot help us with our homework. This helps A LOT! Thank you!!,” wrote a Fort Hood Army student.

Only one hitch: students can't benefit from this great service if they don't know about it. So, please help spread the word by visiting http://www.tutor.com/military-programs/spread-the-word and http://www.facebook.com/TutordotcomForMilitary.

There will be some good press coming out, like this article, which will also help the cause: http://www.military.com/news/article/navy-news/free-online-tutoring-for-servicemembers.html?col=1186032311124

Please contact me directly if you have any suggestions or contacts that could help help us spread the word.

George Cigale

gcigale@tutor.com

5 Million Served, and a couple requests

2009-12-09T07:35:00.003-05:00

Last night, we served our 5 MILLIONTH student with live, on-demand, one-to-one help. We put up a real-time counter at www.tutor.com a couple years ago, which also shows actual sessions that are happening, and we celebrated the odometer clicking past 5,000,000 yesterday as a 6th grader in an Army family connected for math help. To put into perspective the number of students our tutors have helped, we launched this fun page: http://www.tutor.com/5million, and a press release going out today: http://www.tutor.com/press/press-releases-2009/20091208.

Special thanks to the thousands of public libraries, schools, after school organization, corporations, and military and government agencies that placed their trust in us over the past ten years to serve their communities of students and families.

And now, the requests:

1) To help us reach our next 5 million (actually, we're pretty ambitious, so let's say 50 million) students, we'r hiring a National Sales Director, K12 Schools. A description of the job opening can be found at
http://www.tutor.com/careers/corporate/national-sales-director-k12. Please share with the talented sales people you know, and I welcome any help introducing us to innovative school leaders who want to bring online tutoring to their community.

2) Our programs with the Army and Marines allow military personnel and their families to connect to a live tutor for FREE 24/7 help on a wide array of subjects. Adults and children get immediate, one-to-one help from a background checked subject expert online. We've served thousands of students, and in the past few weeks signed an expansion of the program with the Department of Defense to serve all family members in all military services. More info at http://www.tutor.com/military-programs. Please feel free to forward to everyone you know affiliated with the US military, as spreading the word is our top priority.

Thank you for your help, and please contact me if you have any questions or suggestions,

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

Education Reform Allies

2009-12-08T07:13:00.006-05:00

I spent most of yesterday at a conference put on by the American Enterprise Institute (http://www.aei.org/), a preeminent conservative think tank. The theme of the conference was "More Than Just Schools: Rethinking the Demand for Educational Entrepreneurship". You can find the impressive roster of speakers, with bios, as well as the research papers discussed during the day at http://www.aei.org/event/100146. Great day of thinking, sharing, and imagining how to get to an educational system that works for its customers -- children and parents.

During the conference, and at the informal reception and dinner, I had a chance to chat with Rick Hess (http://www.aei.org/scholar/30), who runs AEI's Education group and has authored books with titles like "Common Sense School Reform", and Joe Williams (http://www.dfer.org/list/about/staff/), who runs Democrats for Education Reform (http://www.dfer.org/) and has written "Cheating Our Kids: How Politics and Greed Ruin Education".

The common ground between Rick and Joe, AEI and DFER, is substantive and real, may be surprising to some, and very refreshing to me. They even share a similar look and smile in their bio pictures, above.

DFER may not represent the mainstream or power base of the Democratic Party, but it is gaining influence and has much in common with the views on school reform held by Secretary Duncan and his team.

From DFER's statement of principles: "We support leaders in our party who have the courage to challenge a failing status quo and who believe that the severity of our nation's educational crisis demands that we tackle this problem using every possible tool at our disposal.
We believe that reforming broken public school systems cannot be accomplished by tinkering at the margins, but rather through bold and revolutionary leadership. This requires opening up the traditional top-down monopoly of most school systems and empowering all parents to access great schools for their children."

If you share these principles, as I do, get involved and get active, with your voice and with your dollars.

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

Whose Feedback Matters?

2009-10-20T16:55:00.004-04:00

Simple question: why don't we ask the true customers of our K-12 educational system (the children) what they think about the education they're getting?

Does your teacher go at the right pace?
Do you think your teacher encourages you to ask questions?
Does your teacher explain what you're supposed to learn?

How would schools change if we asked these questions regularly?

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

Safire's Language

2009-09-30T14:21:00.006-04:00

In homage to William Safire (1929-2009), who passed away last weekend:

I was 10 or 11 years old, and the Sunday Times was my consistently open window to the world's news and debates. Being too young during his Nixon years, I was first exposed to Safire through his weekly Sunday Magazine "On Language" column in the late '70s.

The word play and the attention to the fine details and idiosyncracies of language caught my attention and became a weekly dose of fun with words. His column was singularly responsible for sparking my interest in etymology and the process behind how meanings of words evolve beyond their derivations, through popular usage and circumstance.

Maureen Dowd does a very good job, in an uncharacteristically somber tone, in her Op-Ed column today -- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/opinion/30dowd.html, conveying her personal relationship with and respect for Safire. While I never had the opportunity to meet the man, and I disagreed more often than not with his political positions, I am thankful for the lasting impact he made on my appreciation of words and language. A quality and value I hope to pass along to my children, and to others, through writings and conversation.

George Cigale

gcigale@tutor.com

*picture by George Tames/The New York Times

Military benefits from Tutor.com

2009-09-17T22:19:00.008-04:00

I am very happy to share the news that Tutor.com recently signed a major contract with the US Army, following on the footsteps of an initial program with the US Marine Corps. Please feel free to forward this to your US Military friends and colleagues.

Our programs with the Army and Marines allow military personnel and their families to connect to a live tutor for 24/7 help on a wide array of subjects. Adults and children get immediate, one-to-one help from a background checked subject expert online.

We have already served thousands of students in the military (of the nearly 5 million students we've served overall), and the student feedback and results are great. I am writing to ask for your help to spread the word about the availability of help, as students are returning back to school.

You can send this to military personnel or family members you know. And include the details below:

The Army program: http:/www.myarmyonesource.com/cyss_tutor. Eligible for the program are dependents of enlisted Army, Active Duty Army National Guard, Army Reserves, including Wounded Warrior/Survivor, and Army Civilians.

The Marine Corps program: http:/www.usmc-mccs.org/ (click the Tutor.com icon on the home page). Eligible for the program are dependents of Marines and Marine Civilians.

Thanks for your help, and if you happen to have close military ties and have any advice for us on how to spread the word further, please get in touch with me directly: gcigale@tutor.com.

George Cigale

Hacked blog!?!

2009-09-17T19:51:00.002-04:00

Well, that's a first for me. My blogger account was somehow hacked tonight, allowing someone to get at least three annoying and profane posts onto my blog. They're deleted, but if you subscribe to the CEOTutor blog through a feed, my apologies for the spam posts getting into your feed reader. Please ignore them.

Thanks, to everyone who sent me heads up emails this evening letting me know about the weird posts. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming,

George Cigale
gcigale@tutor.com

Service Cuts Hurt Real Children

2009-08-26T07:36:00.009-04:00

As a business, Tutor.com's health is dependent on keeping a high percentage of our institutional customers (libraries, schools, educational organizations, companies) renewing their homework help and online tutoring programs year after year. Some years are tougher than others, but even in this year's harshest economic conditions of our lifetimes, 9 out of 10 customers have decided to renew and continue their programs.

In the face of severe budget cuts at schools and libraries, something valuable often has to go, and many of these decisions were not easy. In some cases, the Tutor.com program did not make the cut. One such case, with a library system in Stockton, CA, children (and some parents) who use their online tutoring program regularly, were given the chance to share their thoughts about the service cut.

As a business, we hate to lose even one customer. As a group of people who come to work empowered by the help our tutors provide to thousands of kids each day, seeing the effect of budget cuts on real kids is gut-wrenching. So, instead of keeping these feelings to ourselves, I thought I'd share the pain a bit. Here is a small sample of the thoughts from the last couple weeks, un-edited, from Stockton:

*****

-- "when i need help this is where i understand the most"

-- "I think tutor.com service is excellent web because it allows me to help my children with their daily homework. Please keep it on. Reopen it. Thank you"

-- "I say that they should not shut this program.. this program has helped me a lot to understand my homework. I need help right know and i would not be able to get it.... but i support this program and it think they should keep it... it will make people get better grades..."

-- "It has been an absolutely wonderful service for help, especially for students in need of desperate guidance while struggling in schoolwork. I myself can testify to that, as there have been many times in which I would be stuck on a math problem or an essay question and have minor headaches as a result. The tutors are indeed intelligent and kind as well, never failing to attempt assisting our homework-conquering. :) I am so grateful for this service; I would be grieved, yes, GRIEVED if the program is no longer open."

-- "i think my library should keep Tutor.com is because what would happen if students have no clue at all and they end up failing their homework or tests just because thier parents and Tutor.com wasn't available to help them on thier homework. kids will be devestated!!!!!!!! teachers will blame them for not knowing how to do thier homework. i'v been using this website (Tutor.com) for about 2 whole years and it has helped me ever sense. please please keep this webstie."

-- "PLease please please please with a chairry on top help keep it open because they have always been helpful to me and my brother with homework and projects, so much more like quizzes and test studying. I was mad with myself for leaving hw blank with a ? mark because i dind't get it. But tutors put a bandaid on my many troubles and were so cool. Please and thank you!!!"

*****

We know that the economy will recover in due time, and most of the services that were cut will return, but in the meantime (and the meantime can be years), the pain is measured in many real children who are being denied the academic help and support they need to succeed in school.

If you, your organization, or someone you know, is in a position to underwrite the cost of these tutoring programs that public libraries and other educational organizations provide, please get in touch with me.

Only somewhat related to the post above: So I don't end on a completely depressing note, I thought I'd share this video created by WNYC's Radio Lab project (Moments by Will Hoffman) -- it's worth the couple minutes to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNVPalNZD_I.

Thanks for taking the time to read,

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

Learning Suite Launched

2009-07-08T13:06:00.005-04:00

We launched something big today. But you probably can't see it. Usually, I tell the world through this blog and provide direct links, when we've planned something for months, put tons of energy and hard work behind it and get it done really well, a week ahead of schedule.

I don't mean to be coy, as this really is a big deal for Tutor.com. But there's much more to Tutor.com than what you are able see at http://www.tutor.com/.

The www is the place where all students and families can trial and purchase our online tutoring services directly, but we also have a network of over 500 sites that we run under contract for public libraries, public and private schools, universities, corporations, and government agencies. We create co-branded online tutoring sites for these institutions, we provide the online learning technology and resources, and the one-to-one live tutors, and the institutions pay us an annual fee for the software and services.

Those software and services saw a major upgrade launch today, and it went extremely smoothly. While you can't see it unless you're one of the thousands of students being served by our client institutions each day, you can see a description of it at http://www.tutor.com/libraries-education/products/k12-center.

The new Tutor.com Learning Suite includes the K-12 Student Center, the College Center, and the Adult Career Center. So much that's new that you can read about at the link above, including resume review and job search help, thousands of vetted and reviewed web resources full of tutorials and other instructional content for all ages and wide array of subjects, a unique proofreading service we've dubbed ProofPoint, and a major upgrade of our online classroom technology that uses Microsoft's Silverlight (really cool collaboration, drawing, and graphic tools).

This was a long and inspiring process of listening to our customers and pulling our team together to deliver more to our institutional customers so they can serve their customers better, even when budgets are tight.

Great job, team! Looking forward to the feedback from our student users and our institution clients,

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com