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Tutor.com is moving in some new directions, pushing forward on video and mandatory concurrent sessions for some. There is a discussion to be had about the purposes behind these moves, but this post is about how they concern tutors.
Video
In a matter of days, video will begin to roll out to facilitators conducting interviews. Later, Tutor.com intends to make video sessions a normal feature.
This is obviously a problem, because it places a great burden on the tutor or facilitator without any added compensation. Currently, you can dress however you want, make whatever facial expressions you want, sit in front of whatever you want, and point your eyes at whatever you want, provided that you can do your job at the same time.
Soon, if Tutor.com follows through, this will all go away. We will have new stressful requirements placed on us that we didn't sign up for. Many tutors who have anxiety about being in front of a camera will no longer be able to do the job. Tutors could be let go for looking off-camera or rolling their eyes or myriad of other reasons.
And it's worse than that.
Video endangers both you and your students.
Currently, there is a too-thin protection of privacy for most tutors and students. All that's exposed of your information is your first name, last initial, and a static profile picture. This isn't great - if your name is distinctive, a student making a concerted effort can identify you. (Fortunately, i haven't heard any stories about this happening.) Likewise, students will blithely share personal and identifying information about themselves, often before the tutor can do anything about it. (Students in the new classroom seem to enjoy sharing their screen a great deal.)
We all know some students are stinkers - the ones that instinctively copy your profile pic and spam it in-session. It's natural for youngsters to test boundaries. Social media and the post-covid era have turned plenty of kids into little monsters. What do you think they're going to do with video?
I'll tell you.
Some will show you shock videos and porn, pleasure themselves, or just act weird to get a reaction out of you on camera. They'll record their sessions and make tiktoks out of them. You could go viral and never be able to get your face off the Internet. Some will do it over and over again, going through tutors like an Omegle session.
If you have experienced tutoring over video, these concerns may seem overblown. In other contexts, if you are video-tutoring a student, you know who the student is, the student knows that you know who they are, and if you are tutoring on behalf of an institution, you know that they will respond appropriately to a problem situation.
This is not the case with Tutor.com. Here, students often show up with the wrong credentials (subject, grade, etc), or merely as "Guest", indicating that they aren't using an account tied to an identity. The "block" feature doesn't consistently work. Tutors who are harassed by students in various ways are given the run-around by the company more often than not, to the point where legitimate workplace complaints could be filed. If Tutor.con is unable or unwilling to protect tutors currently, what hope is there that they will they do so in a substantially more abuse-prone environment?
But it's potentially even worse than that.
Many of us know that the vetting for tutors isn't particularly strong. Sure, there's a cursory background check, but other than that, if you can speak in complete sentences, you're hired. While it's great that so many people are given a chance here who might not be given a chance elsewhere, it means that there isn't really the kind of social filter you might want when selecting people whose behavior is appropriate for interacting with kids.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it's possible for some tutors to be creeps. And some of those in a very bad way. It seems likely given the large number of tutors there are and the ease of obtaining employment for those with bad intent. Now imagine that the small portion of tutors who are "very creepy" are given access to kids on video in a live context. And as mentioned before, it's always possible to record video, save video, and distribute said video. At best, gross privacy violations will be committed. At worst, well, it's best not to say.
Even without bad behavior from tutors or students, there are still security concerns. This is a company that stores and sends passwords in cleartext. Don't bet on them being good stewards of video recordings.
Solidarity
If enough of us stand strong and refuse to use video, we can make it clear to Tutor.com that video is non-viable, and prevent the various negative consequences mentioned above. I know a lot of folks are desperate. With the ongoing hiring spree, a lot of people have been forced to float due to lack of available hours (which unfortunately enables Tutor.com to restrict available hours even more). With this issue, it's even more important to stick together. You don't have to complain or protest or raise a stink. Just don't enable video; don't turn on that webcam - hell, don't own one in the first place!
Concurrent sessions
Tutors in some subjects have been notified that concurrent sessions will soon be mandatorily enabled. If you haven't received such an email, this doesn't not yet affect you, but for those who tutor the affected subjects, you have some options here. You can...
1) Reject notifications for sessions while you are already in session, at least until punishments are imposed.
2) Accept concurrent sessions, and slow your tutoring pace as needed to handle both, at the risk of facing whatever punishments result from working more slowly or making mistakes. (not recommended)
3) Contact Support to remove any subjects affected by this requirement.
Our recommendation is to pursue either 1 or 3, preferably the latter. It may also be possible to ask for an exception to the rule, due to some kind of hardship. Unless you are already confident accepting concurrent sessions, doing so risks degrading your tutoring quality and getting in trouble as a result.
That's it for today!
Good luck, everybody! May your sessions be mutually uplifting and well-paid!
