AMS Tutoring has partnered with app developers Nimbus Tutoring Inc. to offer their private tutoring service through an app. ‘Nimbus’ is designed at making it easier and faster for students to connect with tutors.
The new service replaces a previous app used by the AMS service. Tutoring was previously offered using HelpHub but that service was discontinued in 2018 for various reasons according to AMS staff.
Since then, the AMS Tutoring team has had to manually connect students with tutors via email. “There’s a lot of inefficient time spent emailing back and forth. This new app will make it much more efficient,” said Student Services Manager Ian Stone.
Last year around 1,200 students signed up for tutoring. AMS Tutoring staff tend to receive a spike of inquiries about tutoring around finals and midterms and that can make arranging private tutoring a longer process than usual.
“The main purpose of the app is to help us with arranging private tutoring. This will hopefully help us create a more seamless process,” said AMS Tutoring Coordinator Nikol Grishin.
Nimbus is available for Apple and Android devices and can be downloaded for free. Students and tutors need to create a profile and select their institution before making an appointment.
“What’s nice about the app is that it provides an inter-personal feel to it that we didn’t have with appointment tutoring,” Grishin said.
Through Nimbus, students are able to view a tutor’s qualifications and academic background, read reviews from other users and book an appointment at a time and place of their choosing.
The AMS currently offers private tutoring for a flat rate of $35 an hour to all first and second-year students.
The team hopes the new app will raise the number of students seeking tutoring help. Their aim is to facilitate over 200 appointments through the app over the coming months.
Right now the highest demand is for math, economics and the sciences. But as more students access tutoring through the app the team hopes to be able to expand the number of courses available and hire additional tutors.