HOW EFFECTIVE IS IN-PERSON TUTORING IN THE AGE OF AI

Many still prefer in-person tutoring but today's students mostly learn through screens

- SRIDATRI THAKUR

Remember the days when parents would ask around the neighborhood to find the best tuition teacher? Some kids studied one-on-one, others in batches at a teacher's place. Cut to 2025, and students like Souritra Roy haven't stepped into a physical tuition class in over two years. A first-year Instrumentation and Electronics Engineering student at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, Roy cracked the JEE Mains with a stunning 99 percentile, courtesy online tutorials (he didn't take online tuitions).

Let's accept it. The Covid-19, for all its chaos, made online learning the new normal. Tuition classes have changed big time. What we have now is a hybrid setup that mixes the old-school way of teaching with smart digital tools. "I didn't attend any physical tuition classes to crack the JEE. I relied on courses from Unacademy and other online educational platforms. Even when I was in Class XII, I realised towards the end of the course that I could study on my own with the help of online tutorials. So, even though I initially attended physical tuition classes, I later turned to online tutorials for support," said Roy, who also believes that online education is less time-consuming and allows for easy teacher replacement, unlike in traditional setups.