Could you be a tutor?
Over ten years of running the Digital Unite Tutor Network has given us a good sense of what makes a successful Digital Unite tutor.
Essentially you need three sets of skills:
- Teaching;
- Marketing;
- Computer user.
Teaching
You don’t need to be a qualified teacher but it is essential that you have experience (formal or informal) of teaching or helping others acquire computer skills. You may have this from training or mentoring colleagues at work, or from working as volunteer helping others learn to use computers.
A good teacher must have good people skills. Many of the people who come to you for help will be quite nervous about using digital technology. Some may have had bad experiences, from attending classes that were not right for them, or of being shown how to use a computer by someone who did not understand their needs.
You will need the ability to put them at their ease, to listen to them and understand what they really need, and then to explain and show them how to do it and encourage them to try it for themselves. This must be coupled with patience to do it again if they don’t understand or remember the first time and maybe the second or third time.
Marketing
You can be the best teacher in the world, and know more about computers than anyone but if you don’t tell people, they won’t pay you to help them.
You will have to get out there and tell them. That means advertising, promoting yourself is various ways and building networks of contacts locally. You have got to be willing to put in the time and effort to do this, and to be sufficiently mentally robust, self-motivated and enterprising to stick at it and build your business over time.
We can give you training, advice and support and some promotional materials to help you along the way but we can’t do your marketing for you.
So if you think that being a DU Tutor means you can sit back and wait for us to send you the clients – stop now!
Computer user
You’ll be helping people to use computers so you need to be a competent and confident user of a PC, the internet and the common applications for email, web browsing, word processing and maybe managing photos and music.
You don’t need to be an expert and you certainly don’t need to be a technical wizard.
Most of your clients will want help with basic skills or to build on the basics to make better use of their computer so you need the knowledge to give them that. If you have an in depth knowledge of photo editing, or accounting, or databases, or other tools that individuals or small businesses may use, great – you can offer tuition in those things, at premium prices but it’s not essential.
If you have technical skills with hardware or networks, that is also something you can offer. Many people want these services but again, it’s not necessary. Many DU tutors work on the basis that “I can’t help you with that, but I know a man who can!”
If you are a technical expert, bear in mind that most of your clients will not be and make sure that you don’t blind them with jargon.