how online platforms help students essay

How Effective Is Online Learning? What the Research Does and Doesn’t Tell Us

• Share article

Editor’s Note: This is part of a series on the practical takeaways from research.

The times have dictated school closings and the rapid expansion of online education. Can online lessons replace in-school time?

Clearly online time cannot provide many of the informal social interactions students have at school, but how will online courses do in terms of moving student learning forward? Research to date gives us some clues and also points us to what we could be doing to support students who are most likely to struggle in the online setting.

The use of virtual courses among K-12 students has grown rapidly in recent years. Florida, for example, requires all high school students to take at least one online course. Online learning can take a number of different forms. Often people think of Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, where thousands of students watch a video online and fill out questionnaires or take exams based on those lectures.

In the online setting, students may have more distractions and less oversight, which can reduce their motivation.

Most online courses, however, particularly those serving K-12 students, have a format much more similar to in-person courses. The teacher helps to run virtual discussion among the students, assigns homework, and follows up with individual students. Sometimes these courses are synchronous (teachers and students all meet at the same time) and sometimes they are asynchronous (non-concurrent). In both cases, the teacher is supposed to provide opportunities for students to engage thoughtfully with subject matter, and students, in most cases, are required to interact with each other virtually.

Coronavirus and Schools

Online courses provide opportunities for students. Students in a school that doesn’t offer statistics classes may be able to learn statistics with virtual lessons. If students fail algebra, they may be able to catch up during evenings or summer using online classes, and not disrupt their math trajectory at school. So, almost certainly, online classes sometimes benefit students.

In comparisons of online and in-person classes, however, online classes aren’t as effective as in-person classes for most students. Only a little research has assessed the effects of online lessons for elementary and high school students, and even less has used the “gold standard” method of comparing the results for students assigned randomly to online or in-person courses. Jessica Heppen and colleagues at the American Institutes for Research and the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research randomly assigned students who had failed second semester Algebra I to either face-to-face or online credit recovery courses over the summer. Students’ credit-recovery success rates and algebra test scores were lower in the online setting. Students assigned to the online option also rated their class as more difficult than did their peers assigned to the face-to-face option.

Most of the research on online courses for K-12 students has used large-scale administrative data, looking at otherwise similar students in the two settings. One of these studies, by June Ahn of New York University and Andrew McEachin of the RAND Corp., examined Ohio charter schools; I did another with colleagues looking at Florida public school coursework. Both studies found evidence that online coursetaking was less effective.

About this series

This essay is the fifth in a series that aims to put the pieces of research together so that education decisionmakers can evaluate which policies and practices to implement.

The conveners of this project—Susanna Loeb, the director of Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform, and Harvard education professor Heather Hill—have received grant support from the Annenberg Institute for this series.

To suggest other topics for this series or join in the conversation, use #EdResearchtoPractice on Twitter.

Read the full series here .

It is not surprising that in-person courses are, on average, more effective. Being in person with teachers and other students creates social pressures and benefits that can help motivate students to engage. Some students do as well in online courses as in in-person courses, some may actually do better, but, on average, students do worse in the online setting, and this is particularly true for students with weaker academic backgrounds.

Students who struggle in in-person classes are likely to struggle even more online. While the research on virtual schools in K-12 education doesn’t address these differences directly, a study of college students that I worked on with Stanford colleagues found very little difference in learning for high-performing students in the online and in-person settings. On the other hand, lower performing students performed meaningfully worse in online courses than in in-person courses.

But just because students who struggle in in-person classes are even more likely to struggle online doesn’t mean that’s inevitable. Online teachers will need to consider the needs of less-engaged students and work to engage them. Online courses might be made to work for these students on average, even if they have not in the past.

Just like in brick-and-mortar classrooms, online courses need a strong curriculum and strong pedagogical practices. Teachers need to understand what students know and what they don’t know, as well as how to help them learn new material. What is different in the online setting is that students may have more distractions and less oversight, which can reduce their motivation. The teacher will need to set norms for engagement—such as requiring students to regularly ask questions and respond to their peers—that are different than the norms in the in-person setting.

Online courses are generally not as effective as in-person classes, but they are certainly better than no classes. A substantial research base developed by Karl Alexander at Johns Hopkins University and many others shows that students, especially students with fewer resources at home, learn less when they are not in school. Right now, virtual courses are allowing students to access lessons and exercises and interact with teachers in ways that would have been impossible if an epidemic had closed schools even a decade or two earlier. So we may be skeptical of online learning, but it is also time to embrace and improve it.

A version of this article appeared in the April 01, 2020 edition of Education Week as How Effective Is Online Learning?

Sign Up for EdWeek Tech Leader

Edweek top school jobs.

Sign Up & Sign In

You Can Still Engage Your Students When Teaching Online—Here’s How

Explore more.

• Digital Learning
• Student Engagement

M oving your in-person lecture or discussion course into an online environment typically takes careful thought and preparation time —resources you likely don’t have in abundance as your college or university hastens to respond to the global health crisis COVID-19. Similarly, your students may not be prepared to learn in an online environment. For some of them, attending classes virtually may not be their preferred way to learn.

But rest assured: you absolutely can provide a rich learning experience for your students in an online format.

In Part 1 , I answered your most pressing questions about transitioning your classroom online. Here in Part 2, I will share my advice on how to take advantage of some unique elements of online teaching, including techniques and features that can be even more powerful and engaging for your students than what they’re used to in person. I will also help you deal with some potential drawbacks of online teaching.

Consider students’ technology.

Define and communicate the minimum tech setup you’ll require from them.

Get them outside help using online tutorials or support from the school, if it’s available.

Hold a practice session, if you can, during which you talk about the technology but not any class content.

Have a communication plan that covers all elements of corresponding with students.

Set and foster norms to help students adapt.

Tone has a tremendous impact in an online course. When I teach, I tend to set a relatively formal, intense tone by wearing a suit and tie, whether it’s online or in person. A relaxed, conversational tone can set a warmer atmosphere and foster a sense of community. Decide how you want your class to feel. Does it fit with your style? With your school? This will help you decide on a number of things: what the assignments should look like, what the introductions of your students to one another will be like, how you’re going to build a community, and what that community is going to feel like to participate in. Is your class going to feel like a business meeting, friends conversing, or somewhere in between?

There is no right or wrong here, but you want to make that choice overtly and consciously, rather than having it just evolve. It might also be helpful to take stock after the first or second class to see how things are going so you can adjust accordingly.

Q: Are there different ways to approach lecture classes versus discussion classes online?

No matter what, try to make classes as interactive as you can. One of your goals when teaching online is to keep students from tuning out. Finding ways to engage students that are also pedagogically meaningful is essential to online learning.

That said, if you’re planning to just lecture without any interactive elements, then you’d be better off recording the lecture and making the course asynchronous. Don’t make students log in at a set time just to listen to a lecture.

To make a synchronous class more discussion based, interact with students at least every 15 minutes. Set time flags to remind yourself to take questions or run polls. Do something so you’re not just speaking. Use the technology that you have available:

Interact with your students through audio and video.

Share your screen so that the whole class can view your PowerPoint slides or other presentation materials.

Hand write notes or draw on screen using a blackboard substitute such as a tablet. If you don’t have a tablet, you can type on a keyboard (a quiet one!) or use voice recognition.

Open up a chat. Chat windows are a lot to keep track of, but they are a powerful tool to allow students who aren’t speaking to bring up ideas or follow up on previous points. Be sure you occasionally refer to what’s being said in the chat comments, so students know you’re incorporating their observations into the discussion. Or have a TA or student monitor it and raise salient points periodically.

Use breakout groups—with most online teaching platforms, you can set groups, push a button, and then instantly get students into virtual subgroups.

Remember, things do go wrong, so be prepared with a plan B. And don’t let that sense of losing control stress you out. It’s going to be okay. Not everything has to be perfect in an online course. Students have been using technology all their lives and understand that things crash.

Q: What’s the best way to keep students engaged online?

You have to be larger than life when you are teaching online—since students aren’t seeing you in person, you need to be bigger. For starters, don’t forget to look at the camera. It takes practice, but if you arrange your setup such that you’re looking into the camera by default, that’s going to help a lot. And sell. I’m a shameless salesperson when I’m teaching a course, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If you don’t sell, then students aren’t going to be convinced. Engage yourself and show your passion. Maybe it’s with hand gestures and vocal intonation. Maybe it’s just with the conviction of your words. Remember why you became a teacher and use that energy, that sense of purpose, and convey that to your students.

Here are some other helpful tips and interactive tactics you can use to keep students engaged:

Set high standards for your students. Expect things from them and they will rise to the occasion. If you expect that they’re not going to do that much, then guess what? They’re not going to do that much.

Allow for time lag. Internet connections are not always going to be perfect. When you speak, your timing is going to be off a little bit—so don’t try to accomplish quite as much in the same amount of time. If you ask a question, pause for longer and give students a chance to hear it because there may be a delay.

Keep a class list visible. You can’t rely on the participant list in your online platform—it will be constantly changing depending on who logs in, who logs out, and who’s speaking. This can be very hard to keep track of, so having a separate class list handy—even if you need to print it out on paper—will simplify this for you.

Engage a range of students. Make sure that you call on different students. Don’t let the same voices dominate.

Use warm and cold calls. Use warm calls by letting students know ahead of time that you plan to call on them. You could say, Joe, I’m going to call on you in a little bit. Or email students ahead of time: Joe, I’m going to ask you to talk about this topic. You can also cold call students in a live session. If cold calling produces more anxiety than you are comfortable with, that’s fine. Warm calls can be very effective.

Consider the chat window. I mentioned the chat feature earlier. You can open a chat window for periods of time to have an intense discussion and get a lot of ideas out quickly.

Interject discussion at least every 15 minutes. Again, this will wake students up and reengage them or bring them back if they’ve drifted. Accept the fact that some of them are going to drift, as that’s just what happens with online teaching.

Create polls in response to discussion. You can create polls ahead of time to use during class or write them on the spot if something interesting comes up during the discussion. For instance, if someone raises a point you hadn’t thought of, conduct a quick poll to see what the entire class thinks about that issue.

Summarize. I don’t tend to do this very much in a traditional classroom, but when online students’ attention fades, have some way of summarizing what you’ve been discussing. Even better? Have your students do it. Call on them and say, Can you tell us what we can learn from the last 20 minutes of discussion?

“Don’t make students log in at a set time just to listen to a lecture.” Bill Schiano

Q: How do I handle a class of 50 or more students?

A lot depends on how long the class lasts and the format. For example, if you have an 80-minute synchronous class with 50 students, you will probably hear from no more than 25 to 40 students during the meeting. A great tactic to get students more actively involved is to use a breakout session, where students can talk to one another. Or open the chat window so everyone gets a chance to participate by typing their answers or comments, even if they’re not all heard in the larger discussion. Another way is to open a shared document and have students type into it.

If I have over 50 students in an asynchronous class, I try to do a lot of the work in groups. If I have 120 students, for example, I’ll teach as if there are three classes of 40 or four classes of 30 and have them hold their own discussions. This is more work, so don’t do it this way if you don’t have the time.

Q: What are best practices for running breakout groups online?

Most of the major tools (Zoom, Adobe Connect, and Blackboard Collaborate, for instance) offer this functionality. Don’t be intimidated by it—vendors provide good, brief tutorials on how to use this function. Most will also let you set the groups up before the session starts. But in the simplest case, you just input the number of groups you’d like, and the system will assign everyone instantly.

I find the ideal size of a breakout group to be in the 4- to 7-student range. You can go larger if the students are used to working in virtual groups, although I’d stay below 10 if you can. I try to pop in on each group if there is time, just to check on progress and ask if they have questions. If you want to keep close tabs or have a record, you can disable audio in the breakout rooms. But I typically let them use audio and video in the rooms if it is available. Unless I have a lot of time for the session, I don’t do much substantive work with individual breakout groups. If you have a very large class, you probably can’t “visit” every group personally. Most tools will let you send messages to groups without joining each one.

If you don’t have enough students to make subdividing into groups sensible, then let them work as one group. In that case, I usually “sit in” as their manager, auditor, client, or consultant. To use the group time well, set a clear task; suggest processes that might make them more productive; provide a timer, or regular reminders of time remaining; scope the deliverable so that it will be meaningful and useful; and define the deliverable explicitly.

Q: What’s the best way to manage shy or reticent students?

This is a common challenge with online courses. You’ll need to decide how important this issue is to you, and then let that determination steer the remedies you implement. For me, it’s essential that all students be engaged in the discussion, including turning on their video camera for synchronous sessions and contributing to the conversation. I see it as central to the success of the course and, more importantly, to students’ learning and development. My students are in a business school, and they’re planning careers that will require them to engage and speak up in physical and virtual meetings.

Here are strategies I often use:

Make it clear that online engagement is required. Technical camera issues are rarely a valid excuse in 2020—students can always use their phones.

Passionately explain why such engagement is important—it’s good for the class and it’s an important practice for them before they embark on their careers.

Warm call students regularly (some before the synchronous sessions, some during).

Send emails (I use a mail merge to make it seem more personal) to anyone who didn’t engage in the previous session. I typically express my interest in hearing from those quiet students in the next session.

Make participation a significant part of the grade, if possible.

Use polls, shared documents, brief writing exercises, or chat to help draw out students’ ideas. Then call on individual students to expand their thinking—this doesn’t feel as high-pressure as a pure cold call.

Use group work before or during class to prime the discussion. You can assign groups to present the opening part of class, for example. Or you can delegate extra responsibility for the class discussion to a group to ensure you will at least have a small subset of students who are well prepared.

These same techniques also help students from diverse backgrounds who may not be studying in their native language. Many students who are reluctant to speak in physical classrooms find speaking in virtual ones easier. The same techniques you use in the physical classroom remain essential, but pay particular attention to speaking pace (yours and your students’); many of us speed up when we are speaking to a computer.

Also, be honest and talk to your students about this unique situation. Explain why getting comfortable in an online setting is relevant to their careers. This is the way so many meetings happen, and right now, with so many companies canceling conferences and travel, this is the way most work is going to get accomplished for a while. Remind them of that.

Q: Why is it important to build a community among students?

The more you can build community, the more your students will feel invested in the course, and the more likely they are to engage in the work. Plus, by promoting a community among your students, everyone in the class will start to want everyone else to be better, which is very valuable.

There are also benefits to community building that go far beyond your class. The more connections we can build during this time, the better off all of us will be. Many of your students are going to want this connection because they’re going to miss being able to physically go to campus or go to the coffee shop and talk to people. Providing some of that connection in the online space will help with the stress and feelings of isolation that this COVID-19 pandemic is very likely to cause.

A simple but important step: make sure your students know each other. There are tools available in your learning management system that foster community by allowing you to build profiles where students can describe their background. Also, encourage your students to chat informally just as they would in a physical classroom—during breaks or before class.

Read Part 1 to learn how to quickly adapt to teaching online and set up your digital classroom.

Bill Schiano is a professor of computer information systems at Bentley University. He teaches both managerial and technical courses exclusively using discussion and the case method and has done so in online and hybrid formats. Bill regularly facilitates the web-based seminar Teaching with Cases Online .

Related Articles

We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience, including personalizing content. Learn More . By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies and revised Privacy Policy .

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

169 Beyond “Good Job!”: How Online Peer Review Platforms Improved My Students’ Writing and Made My Life Easier

by Liza Long

“Good job!” “Nice work!” “I think you need a comma here.”

Most instructors are familiar with these types of student comments during peer review. Nearly every composition instructor uses peer review in the classroom because we know that this activity is important. Brammer and Rees note that all experienced instructors recommend peer review to new instructors, yet both students and instructors are often unhappy with both the peer review process and the results. However, composition scholars have reached consensus that “the composing process is social, and peer review is an integral part of that process” (Brammer and Reese, 72). In an online environment, promoting student engagement can be especially challenging.

What does peer review look like in your classroom? In my face to face classes, I used to put students in groups and ask them to print out multiple copies of their drafts, then use a rubric that I created to have them check their peers’ work, with a vague student-directed “workshop” style discussion after the rubrics were complete. In an online class, I used a peer review discussion board, asking students to post their drafts and complete those same instructor-created peer review templates on each other’s work. But what were my students really learning through these peer review activities? Did peer review improve their writing? How could I make peer review a transferable skill?

One challenge I face with constructing meaningful peer review is that my students come from diverse backgrounds and reach my course with dramatically different previous academic experiences. I teach at the College of Western Idaho, the largest college in our state, with more than 24,000 students. Our two-year commuter college provides education to a wide variety of learners, from traditional students seeking a lower-cost option for their general education coursework to career and technical education students who are required to complete a written communication requirement. My English 102 Rhetoric and Composition classes, capped at 26 students, typically include a diverse mix from a variety of majors: traditional learners, adult learners, English language learners, and even dual credit high school students.

In  2017, on the recommendation of my colleague Meagan Newberry, I took a risk and tried out my first online peer review platform, Eli Review. I quickly learned that online platforms play an important role in facilitating more meaningful peer review experiences while also saving time for instructors. We are now feeling a new sense of urgency about online tools because the sudden shift to online learning precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic during the Spring 2020 term made many of us rethink our traditional approaches to instruction. Online peer review is one tool that all instructors should consider. In a study of online peer review, Hicks et al. noted online platforms can provide engaging and enriching peer review experiences, but that the way instructors frame online peer review assignments is critical to the quality of feedback that student peers provide, and that “chunking” writing assignments leads to higher-quality feedback. In this essay, I’ll share my experience with two online peer review tools and explain how the iterative and constructive process of online peer review has transformed my students’ writing while also promoting critical thinking skills that prepare them for the workplace—and saving me time in the process.

Two Peer Review Platforms: Eli Review and Peergrade

After a colleague’s enthusiastic recommendation as noted above, I began using Eli Review, an online peer review platform, in 2017 for both my online and hybrid classes. I later adopted it for face-to face classes as well, dedicating one classroom day each week to the peer review drafting and revising process. In 2019, I piloted a peer review platform called Peergrade, which is the platform I currently use. I currently use Peergrade in my English 101 Writing and Rhetoric I, English 102 Writing and Rhetoric II, and English 211 Literary Analysis (advanced writing requirement) course s. I use the peer review tool differently in each course. For English 101, where we are focusing on using sources to support arguments in academic essays, I use Peergrade as an iterative writing and feedback tool to help students learn to craft paragraphs and draft thesis statements. In English 211, I use it for a more traditional peer review, asking students to assess each other’s literary analysis essay drafts using the grading rubric. Peergrade is a major component of my English 102 course design, so I will focus on that course as I share what has worked for me.

Both Eli Review and Peergrade function in similar ways. Eli Review is available as a low-cost subscription to students and offers a stand-alone website. Students purchase the subscription at the campus bookstore or online. According to Eli Review’s website , a three month subscription to the service is $12.50 per student. I switched to Peergrade because we have an institutional license and it integrates with our LMS (Blackboard), which means that students can access the platform directly from our Blackboard class. At the College of Western Idaho, we do not currently pass the Peergrade license cost on to our students. For Peergrade, students are automatically enrolled. With Eli Review, they have to enroll in a course I create using their school email accounts. Both tools allow instructors to collect data on student engagement and performance. While I personally think that Eli Review is a slightly superior tool with a better graphical interface, data analytics, and user experience, the LMS integration and the lower cost for students made it easy to switch to Peergrade. Both platforms offer excellent client support and are responsive to instructor feedback.

Introducing the Online Peer Review Platform and Process

I introduce the online peer review platform on the first day of class. My students’ first writing task for the platform is also my first week writing assessment:

In 2-3 paragraphs, describe how much experience you have with peer review and academic writing, how you worked with peers (in pairs, groups, etc.), and how you interacted (reading essays out loud, group conversations, etc.). Describe in detail the kinds of feedback you received from your reviewers, but also the kind of feedback you gave to the people you reviewed. Did you find that the feedback you received was useful? If not, what would make feedback more useful to you as a writer?

When I am teaching hybrid or face to face classes, we respond to this prompt in class together using our college’s laptop cart, giving students the opportunity to try the online peer review platform with my support. For online classes, I provide and record a brief tutorial throughout my LMS to walk students through the submission process. This prompt gives me the opportunity to create a baseline of peer review experience and attitudes for the class. Hicks et al. note that this kind of background research into students’ experiences with and cultural assumptions about peer review is an important first step in framing high-quality peer review tasks.

In our next class session (or the next week online), I introduce the peer review process and explain how it will work in our course. Teaching students what peer review is and how they are expected to do it is an evidence based practice. For example, Brammer and Reese note that students who receive instruction in how to peer review feel more confident in their abilities and have more positive experiences with the peer review process. After discussing my students’ writing submissions and addressing any concerns they have about peer review, I ask them to share examples of where they encounter reviews in their daily lives. In fact, reviews and surveys are nearly ubiquitous. We can’t even purchase a new pen on Amazon without being asked to review our shopping experience. Students quickly generate workplace examples of peer review: for example, their work is reviewed by supervisors, or if they themselves are supervisors, they may have to review others. Through this initial discussion, students establish the “why” of peer review. They also start thinking about the “what.” Are we just looking for misplaced commas? Or are we ensuring that the meaning of the essay is clear to the reader? As instructors who have created peer review rubrics know, establishing criteria for a review is not an easy task.

Using the Peer Review Platform for Writing and Revising

Each week, my students have an assigned writing task. They complete the writing task by Sunday for face to face and hybrid courses, then complete their assigned peer reviews before our next on-ground class. In online classes, I set a midweek deadline for writing tasks and a Sunday deadline for review tasks. Both Eli Review and Peergrade allow the instructor to set parameters for reviews, including the number of reviews required, whether or not the reviews will be anonymous, and whether late work is allowed. In my classes, we decide together whether to use anonymous feedback. In peer review, students are asked to identify required traits in their peers’ essays, then evaluate the essays on defined criteria. I also ask students to provide a final comment using the “Describe-Evaluate-Suggest” model of peer feedback as explained by Eli Review here . While I do not comment on every assignment, I use some of these formative assignments to ensure that the students are on task and understand the goal of the essay we are working on. For an example of my exploratory research weekly tasks and rubrics, including a student-created essay draft rubric, see Appendix I.

Learning to rate each other’s feedback has required norming exercises. Baker has noted that one area of concern for faculty is whether students are capable of giving high quality feedback. I ask students to rate each peer’s final comment on the five-star helpfulness scale, based on how well it meets Eli Review’s “Describe/Evaluate/Suggest” model for feedback.

• Five stars = Will transform the writer’s draft: all three parts are included, are specific, and the reviewer went above and beyond.
• Three stars = Solid, helpful, specific, and includes all three pieces.
• One star = May not include any aspects of the model or be too vague to be helpful.

Initially, peer feedback scores tend to skew high. We look at anonymized examples to discuss the kinds of comments that are truly helpful. I also spotlight “feedback stars” with examples of high-quality feedback at the beginning of class when we debrief about the week’s writing and review assignments.

The bulk of my students’ course grade now comes from peer review. Rather than grading individual essay drafts, I assign 100 points to each essay’s peer review tasks. Part of the grade depends on how students rate their peers’ submissions, and another part of the grade depends on how their peers rate the quality of their feedback. Both Eli Review and Peergrade allow students to numerically assess each other’s work and each other’s feedback. As noted above, I expect that students will provide feedback that is helpful at a “three stars” level (out of five) to earn full credit for their reviews. Baker’s study of a four-week peer review process supports this approach for high-quality feedback. See Appendix 2 for a rubric and examples of student feedback.

I do not provide an evaluative grade (other than complete/incomplete) for any of my students’ essays until they submit their final portfolios at the end of the semester. One of my colleagues, Meagan Newberry, uses a similar peer review approach with a grading contract proposed by Asao Inoue in his book Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies . In Newberry’s class, students who complete their writing and review tasks at the expected “three star” level earn a B in the course; for an A, students must complete an additional assignment.

How Students Responded to Online Platforms

I have seen improvement in student engagement and satisfaction as I have become more familiar with these online tools. In Fall 2016, the semester before I started using online peer review platforms, only 50% (12/24) students completed the end of course survey, with 100% expressing that they were “satisfied” (17%) or “very satisfied” (83%) with the course. Their comments tended to focus more on me as an instructor and less on their own writing process. In the first semester in which I taught the course using an online peer review platform, my student evaluations were less positive: I had a 44% response rate for my end of course evaluations, and 90% of the students who completed the end-of-course survey expressed that they were “satisfied”(10%) or “very satisfied ”(81%) with the course, and 9% rating their experience as “neutral.”

In Spring 2018, after I had used online platforms for one year and refined the peer review feedback process, 60% (15/25) of my students completed the end of course survey, with 100% reporting that they were either “satisfied” (27%) or “very satisfied” (73%). Seven commenters specifically mentioned Eli Review as a reason that they enjoyed the course. In 2019, after I switched to the LMS-integrated PeerGrade platform, 67% (14/21) students completed their end of course survey, again with 100% reporting that they were “satisfied” (35%) or “very satisfied” (65%) with the course. While none of the students mentioned Peergrade in their comments, many of them commented on how their writing had improved. I think there’s a possibility that students prefer the user experience of Eli Review to Peergrade, which may account for the lower numbers of “very satisfied” students as well as the fact that the online platform was not mentioned in student comments.

Spring 2020 was a special case for all of us, and I did not have high expectations for my course evaluations. While fewer students completed their end-of-course surveys, all three of my sections finished the year strong despite the challenges of COVID-19 and moving online. In one section, 13/22 students (59%) completed the end of course survey, with 100% reporting that they were very satisfied (53%) or satisfied (46%) with the course. Honestly, given the fact that none of these students had signed up for what became an online course, I am proud of this assessment. In their final comments, students noted that they had learned the revision process and that they were proud of their final portfolios and the work they had accomplished. Not a single student complained about the move from hybrid to online in their comments.

What I Have Learned from My Students’ Online Peer Review Experiences

While I was initially hesitant to try this new tool because I was concerned about the time involved in learning a new system, using online peer review platforms has transformed the way I teach my English 102 courses. These platforms provide structure and organization to support student writing, and they foster a collaborative classroom experience in hybrid and online courses. Here are some of my top takeaways after three years of using this type of peer review:

• Using an online platform for peer review can provide engagement and accountability, allowing for more constructive feedback from classmates. When students write for an audience of their peers, they try harder. My students consistently report high levels of engagement with the course and each other. As Baker notes, “Research consistently demonstrates that engaging students in the feedback process improves the quality of students’ final submissions” (180).
• For hybrid or online classes, these platforms are especially valuable. For example, during the quick switch from hybrid to fully online courses precipitated by COVID-19 in the Spring 2020 term, our peer review platform provided continuity and a simple way for me to check that students were completing their regular assignments. Students told me that my courses felt “normal” to them, which was reassuring in a time when so many other areas of their lives were changing.
• The peer review process supports student writing because it reinforces the iterative nature of the writing process. Students break essay tasks into chunks, then incorporate these chunks into the larger essay project (Baker, Hicks et al.).
• The online peer feedback platform provides an easy way for me to give early feedback on formative assessments so that I can intervene and make writing center referrals for students who were struggling with course concepts like thesis statements, source use, or paragraph unity.
• Students learn to create their own assessment rubrics, enabling them to think more critically about their rhetorical process. This metacognition helps to reinforce the rhetorical situation for each essay that I teach (see Appendix I: Week Four Peer Review, Student Created Rubric).

Ultimately  , I have concluded based on my experiences that using the online platform’s writing and review process has led to stronger student essays with less time spent on my part Because students know that a large portion of their grade depends on their revisions, they feel free to take more creative risks with their work. They choose more difficult topics for their exploratory and persuasive essays, and they learn to embrace the idea that writing an academic essay is a process. Students have reported high levels of satisfaction with both Eli Review and Peergrade in every course where I have used these online platforms. Most importantly, these tools have saved me time as an instructor while also increasing students’ perception of my engagement. Overall, I give online peer review platforms five out of five stars.

Works Cited

Baker, Kimberly M. “Peer Review as a Strategy for Improving Students’ Writing Process.”  Active Learning in Higher Education  17.3 (2016): 179-192. https://www.hendrix.edu/uploadedFiles/Academics/Faculty_Resources/Faculty_Development_Newsletters/Peer-review-student-writing.pdf

Brammer, Charlotte, and Mary Rees. “Peer Review from the Students’ Perspective: Invaluable or Invalid?.”  Composition Studies  35.2 (2007): 71-85. https://www.uc.edu/content/dam/uc/journals/composition-studies/docs/backissues/35-2/Brammer%20and%20Rees%2035.2.pdf

Eli Review. “The Describe-Evaluate-Suggest Model of Peer Feedback.” (2016) https://elireview.com/2016/08/03/describe-evaluate-suggest/

Hicks, Catherine M., et al. “Framing Feedback: Choosing Review Environment Features that Support High Quality Peer Assessment.”  Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems . 2016. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2858036.2858195

Inoue, Asao B. Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future. Parlor Press (2015). https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspectives/inoue/

Peergrade. “Getting Started.” https://www.peergrade.io/getting-started/

Appendix I: Exploratory Research Essay Writing Tasks and Peer Review Rubrics

Week one writing task.

Post your narrowed and focused research question for Essay One (Exploratory Research) here. Then write 2-3 paragraphs explaining why you chose this topic and what you expect to find in your research. Your instructor will provide you with feedback on this assignment.

Week One Peer Review Rubric

Trait Identification

• The research question is phrased as a single question. (Y/N)
• The research question is focused (not too broad, not too narrow) *Y/N)
• The research question is objective (does not take sides). Y/N
• The research question is appropriate for a 6-8 page college essay. Y/N Please comment on your response.

I would like to read a paper that answers this research question.

• Wow, this paper will change my life!

Please comment on any part of the research question that you think could be improved using the Describe-Evaluate-Suggest model. For example, is the question objective, or does it contain value statements (words that have positive or negative connotations)? Is the topic too broad or too narrow? If so, suggest a way to narrow or expand the topic. If you know of a good source for this question, feel free to share it! Your response must be at least 75 words in length.

Week Two Writing Task: Academic Article Summary and APA Style Reference

• Choose one academic source you plan to use for your exploratory research essay.
• Summarize the source in 5-6 sentences.
• Use at least one template from Chapters 1-3 of  They Say/I Say  in your summary.
• Include one direct quote from your source and cite the quote correctly in APA style.
• Create the APA-style full reference for your source and place it at the bottom of your paragraph.
• Check your paragraph for correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and academic style.  

Week Two Peer Review Rubric

• The summary used an appropriate academic source (not Wikipedia or a fake news site) Y/N
• The assignment summarized the article in 5-6 sentences. Y/N
• The summary used a They Say/I Say template from Chapters 1-3. If no, please suggest one. Y/N
• The summary included a direct quote with an APA style in-text source citation. Y/N
• The summary included an APA style full reference for the source at the end of the paragraph. Y/N
• After reading the summary paragraph, I understand the main ideas of the source. Y/N
• The summary paragraph displays the conventions of academic writing, including style, grammar, and correct punctuation/spelling. Y/N

Please make sure that you include a final comment that your peer would rate as at least three stars for helpfulness here. Remember to like your peers’ feedback if you would rate it as three stars or higher.

Week Three Writing Task: Introduction (aka “Hook”)

How do you get your audience’s attention? The introductory paragraph is one of the most important parts of your essay. An effective hook catches the reader’s interest in a specific, concrete way. Look at the introductory paragraphs in the essay section of  They Say/I Say  for some examples of effective hooks.

• Outrageous statement or exaggeration:  In “Don’t Blame the Eater” (p. 241), David Zinczenko invites the audience to consider a headline suitable for a Jay Leno monologue.
• Question:  Zinczenko also uses a series of questions to get the reader’s attention. “Whatever happened to personal responsibility?” Richard Muller similarly uses the questioning technique in combination with a strong statement in “Nuclear Waste” (p. 252).
• Strong statement:  In “Hidden Intellectualism” (p. 244), Gerald Graff states, “Everyone knows some young person who is impressively ‘street smart’ but does poorly in school.”
• Anecdote:  In “The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream” (p. 260), Barbara Ehrenreich uses anecdote and vivid imagery to set the tone of her essay.
•  Vivid Imagery or unusual detail.  Flannery O’Connor starts off her short story “Everything that Rises Must Converge” (p. 272) with vivid imagery.

Other ways to start your essay include (with my examples):

• A quotation : In a 1965 sermon the day after nonviolent resisters faced police brutality in Selma, Alabama, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Deep down in our non-violent creed is the conviction there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they’re worth dying for.”
• A   statistic or fact : According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one in five children under the age of 18 lives with a severe and debilitating mental disorder.

Choose at least one of these techniques to write a draft of your introductory paragraph(s) for Essay One.

• Remember that the purpose of your essay is exploratory and the tone should be objective, so some of these techniques may be more appropriate than others.
• Avoid the second person pronoun  you  in your draft (you may use first and third person pronouns).
• Your hook should end with a thesis statement that answers your research question. For an example, see Michaela Cullington’s essay , “Does Texting Affect Writing?” Her thesis statement comes at the end of paragraph three: “In fact, it seems likely that texting has no significant effect on student writing.”

Week Three Peer Review Rubric

• The introduction starts with a “hook” to catch the reader’s interest. Y/N
• The introduction avoids the second person pronoun “you.” Y/N
• The introduction is at least one paragraph in length. Y/N
• The introduction is specific and concrete. Y/N
• The introduction ends with a thesis statement that answers the research question. Y/N

This introduction makes me want to learn more about the topic.

• I cannot wait to read this essay!

This introduction uses the conventions of academic style, including good grammar, punctuation, spelling, and academic tone. Please provide a brief comment to explain your answer.

• Needs some work
• Solid style
• Wow! You’re an academic style pro!

Week Four Writing Task: Exploratory Research Paper Rough Draft

Writing task is due Sunday at 11:59 p.m. Reviews are due by Thursday before class. The final revised essay is due to Blackboard on the following Sunday at 11:59 p.m.

Note: The reviews for this assignment are not anonymous. You should have only two papers to review. I have also assigned a self-assessment for your essay, which means you will have the chance to check your own work against our class-created rubric.

Week Four Peer Review: Student-Created Rubric (Note: These differ by class)

• The essay contains an effective hook and introduction.
• The essay contains five or more sources.
• The sources used are credible.
• The paper uses APA citation style.
• In text citations are mostly correct (author, date).
• The entire essay supported the research question and answer (thesis statement).
• The essay meets the length requirements.
• The essay includes an introduction, thesis statement, and conclusion.
• The essay is objective in tone (free from bias). If no, please comment.
• The essay does not use the second person pronoun “you” (except in direct quotes).
• The paper uses They Say/I Say templates.

Evaluations

The essay taught me something new.

• I didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know
• I already knew something about this topic, but I learned something new
• I hadn’t heard anything about this topic, and I learned something new

Evaluate the essay’s grammar and punctuation

• Needs a lot of work
• Has some issues
• Mostly effective

Evaluate how informative the essay is.

• Gets persuasive or is slightly off topic
• I feel way more informed about this topic! Nice work!

The essay contains a good balance of sources and original ideas (They Say/I Say)

The paper is engaging and interesting

• I was interested but it could be better
• I was so intrigued by this paper, I reread it!

How likely are you to recommend this essay to a friend? Please explain your response.

• I could not recommend this essay to anyone
• I might recommend this essay to someone
• I would definitely recommend this essay to someone.

Appendix II: Peer Review Grading Rubric and Examples of Student Feedback

Possible Deductions for Each Week

• -5 submission score below 70%
• -5 reviewer score below 70%
• -5 for each missing review

Examples of Student Feedback

• I completely agree that many problems lurk on the internet. I also agree that parents should take the responsibility to protect their kids from harm of all kinds including those found on the internet. I like the idea of educating kids and holding them accountable with the contract.  Your Rating: One Star
• Have you thought about having the parents take turns volunteering between their classes? If enough parents participated and volunteered in the program you are suggesting, maybe they could cover most of the time slots and get a break on their fees. Also, CWI and other schools offer online and/or hybrid classes (like this one that we are in), which allow students more freedom in scheduling their school work. Maybe online classes could be part of the “plan of action” that you were talking about.  Your Rating: Three Stars
• I think everybody wants to fix this “very expensive health insurance” problem. All of us wish we could live a healthy life. I believe that without our health we can’t live happily. It would be so sad if we couldn’t see a doctor because we don’t have health insurance. What I hear you saying is that we need a universal healthcare system. Since the assignment asks us to first prove there’s a significant problem, I’m wondering which you plan to focus on? Will it be an insurance company or medical costs? It might be that both are connected, but if you focus on either one the problem of your argument will be more clear and strong. I would suggest finding evidence that convinces the reader how much the cost differences are between employer insurance and private insurance in Idaho. If you don’t have a job you don’t have insurance? You can’t get any healthcare at all? You might be able to get useful information on the website for The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.  http://healthandwelfare.idaho.gov/Medical/tabid/61/Default.aspx Your Rating: Five Stars

Beyond “Good Job!”: How Online Peer Review Platforms Improved My Students’ Writing and Made My Life Easier Copyright © 2020 by Liza Long is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

Online Learning Platforms: Helping Your Students Engage

Many English coursebooks come with access to an online learning platform full of material to help learners develop their language skills further. These can be particularly beneficial for academic English learners who need to achieve a certain level of English within a limited time period. But I wonder how many students (and teachers) fully exploit these materials.

For me, the greatest benefit of education technology is that it provides learners with the opportunity to extend learning beyond the classroom, work at their own pace and at a level appropriate to them. Online learning platforms allow all of those things as well as provide a tool for students and teachers to keep a record of progress made. Essentially, they allow learners to have more ownership of their learning which helps them learn better. According to Benson (2011), “controlling one’s own learning processes is an essential part of effective learning”.

However, encouraging students to use such a resource is not always easy as some students overlook the value of it. I’d therefore like to suggest four ways to help those students appreciate this value better and encourage them to fully exploit the resource.

Persuade the teacher, persuade the student

I believe that before students can be convinced, their teacher needs to be convinced. Once the teacher sees the benefits, they can encourage students to do the same. One possibility is to explore the platform as a class together. Students can familiarise themselves with the platform, with their own learning goals in mind. As Dudeney and Hockly (2007) say, when using educational technology “Your learners’ needs, likes and learning goals need to be taken into account”. By getting students to critically analyse the platform, the benefits will be more apparent to them. The class can also discuss limitations and how those limitations can be dealt with.

Make connections

Research suggests that better outcomes are achieved when online learning and face-to-face learning happen together (Vega, 2013) and linking the two in some way adds more importance to the online platform. Learners will be better encouraged to do online tasks if they have to bring some kind of feedback on the tasks to class e.g. their view on something said in a recording or two new words they learnt. With speaking tasks, the online material could help students prepare for the actual speaking task done in class, rather than recording it at home and emailing it to the teacher. And students could be asked to peer correct each other’s writing work in class.

Set regular deadlines

Some teachers link online material to the course through assessment, making completion of online tasks compulsory. While this can motivate students to do tasks, it can also result in students leaving all the tasks until the very last minute to satisfy course requirements. This means students neither use the online tasks to develop their skills throughout the year nor use the results of the tasks to help inform future learning. As a result, teachers may want to set regular deadlines on the platform.

Give students choice

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, asking students to make choices about their learning helps them to develop autonomy. “For learners to become more autonomous they must recognize their own preferred ways of learning, and students have to make conscious decisions about what works for them” (Painter, 2004). By giving students the opportunity to choose which material to study and when, they can feel more motivated to do the tasks and learn more about their learning preferences. For some students, however, too much choice can be overwhelming and so a choice of two or three sets of tasks each time may be a good place to start.

To sum up, online learning platforms offer much potential and the above suggestions can help learners to see this potential. There will always be students who choose not to participate but this is also part of being autonomous. There will also always be students who will exploit the material and learn from it with encouragement from the teacher.

Please note that not all titles are available in every country.  Please check with your local office about local title availability.

Bibliography and further reading

Benson P, Teaching and Researching: Autonomy in Language Learning, 2013

Dudeney G & Hockly N, How to teach English with technology, Pearson, 2007

Painter L, Homework, Oxford University Press, 2003

Stanley, G, Language Learning with Technology, Cambridge University Press, 2013

Access to Learn at home website: https://oxelt.gl/LAH10

Lindsay Warwick offers four ways to persuade students to make use of an online learning platform. Lindsay Warwick is a teacher and trainer at Bell and a materials writer. She is co-author of the forthcoming Milestones in English A2 and B1+ Student’s Books, publishing in January 2016.

You may also like

Helping advanced students overcome the language learning plateau, listening activity ideas for adult learners, 4 ways to teach multimodal literacy in the language classroom.

I want lherning Englash

Thanks for this blog! Let me add an online learning app to your list. Here’s the link: https://www.justlearn.com/

Great and very informative blog. See this too.

Online teaching platforms and e-learning websites allow students to expand their educational opportunities by having access to lifelong learning.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Recent posts, how graded readers and engaging activities can ignite student interest in the magic of books, ‘play is for children’: myths about learning through play, the big debate: ai and inclusivity, four more reasons you don’t need to feel worried about teaching english pronunciation., recent comments.

Copyright 2023 © Oxford University Press 2023

Read our Privacy Policy , Cookie Policy & Legal Notice .

This blog contains external links. OUP are not responsible for the content of external sites nor do we endorse any companies or organisations linked to. Any views or opinions expressed in the articles on these posts are those of the author(s).

Oxford University Press - ELT

Inside this article...

What is an online learning platform, common features of online learning platforms, typical benefits of online learning platforms, developing the best online learning platform strategy, elevating market research through user experience analysis, the online learning platform market: essential information, looking to the future, our top-rated online learning platforms.

The Ultimate Guide to Online Learning Platforms

An online learning platform is a digital environment that provides a centralised space for users to upload content and integrate features. It is, in many ways, an educational institution’s online hub, representing an essential piece of the teaching and learning puzzle.

Online learning platforms are flexible virtual spaces, allowing users to upload materials and integrate features that elevate the teaching and learning experience. This means the systems operate more as a customisable canvas, rather than a rigid solution with predetermined functionalities.

Nevertheless, it is extremely important to understand the range of support provided by learning platform solutions. After all, you want to get the most out of your chosen product.

Content Management  

Online learning platforms act as content management hubs for sharing, organising, and creating teaching materials.

• Sharing: Educators can upload and share a diverse range of learning materials, including documents, presentations, PDFs, and various types of multimedia content. 
• Organising: A centralised repository provides a straightforward method for storing and structuring your uploaded learning materials. A search function and/or tagging system can simplify the process of finding content, and version controls empower educators to monitor document modifications and return to previous versions as needed. Access controls, such as staff-exclusive repositories or student filters tailored to specific classes, courses, or year groups, grant flexibility in determining who can view and use certain content. Scheduling capabilities allow instructors to sequence learning materials, creating a structured learning path for students.

• Creating: The ability to aggregate and organise various types of learning materials facilitates content creation, and certain online learning platforms will either have built-in authoring tools , or support integration with third-party software. This means custom lesson materials, assessments, and even interactive eTextbooks can be created.

Communication Tools

Online learning platforms allow students and instructors to engage digitally, both one-on-one or in large groups, and both during or outside of class. 

• Informational: Announcements, notifications, alerts, and social media integration allow institutions to share information, ensuring that everyone is aware of critical course-related information.  Surveys and polls allow schools and colleges to gather information, collecting input on course content or teaching methods.

• Two-way flow : Dynamic tools like discussion forums, chat rooms, and email capabilities facilitate two-way communication.
• Reflective : Blogs or journals can help students share reflections on their learning experience.

Learner Administration

• Progress Tracking : Students and educators can track learner progress within courses, including attendance, completed assignments, and grades. Dashboard or progress bars can be employed to provide a visualisation of performance.
• Progress Reporting: Tracked metrics can be used to generate reports within the online learning platform, allowing informed decisions to be made about course improvements and learner support.
• Learner Management: Administrators can use a online learning platform to access useful information about students, including their progress, special educational needs details, classes, and course information. They can also add and manage user accounts for learners, instructors, and support staff, as well as enrol individuals in courses or programmes, either through manually or automated processes. Users can create and update their profiles, providing personal information, contact details, and preferences. These profiles may include photos, bios, and links to social media or external websites.

A word of caution Please be aware that not all online learning platforms will offer these features (some may provide even more!). It is, therefore, your responsibility to thoroughly review each platform to ensure that your eventual solution aligns with the specific requirements of your school and its students.

Just as the features of an online learning platform exhibit flexibility, their yielded benefits depend on the extent to which applications and content are seamlessly integrated into the system.

Content Management

• Personalised Learning : Being able to choose from a wealth of content, as well as customise it to your choosing, means instructors can deliver materials matching the various learning styles and paces of their students.
• Rich Multimedia : Diverse multimedia content types can make learning more engaging and effective, and allow teachers to accommodate the different learning styles and preferences in their classroom.
• Updated Resources : Instructors can maintain their content, thereby ensuring that learning materials are relevant, accurate, high-quality, and applicable to the real world.
• Formative Assessment: Online learning platforms allow for ongoing, formative assessments, providing instructors with valuable insights for improving instruction and meeting specific learner needs effectively.
• Self-Paced Learning: For students with diverse schedules, learning styles, and goals, unlimited access to digital materials and assessments can help them master material at a speed better suiting their needs, as well as alleviate the stress associated with feeling like they’re falling behind.
• Objective Grading : By supporting the incorporation of a structured and transparent framework for assessment, as well as automated grading where possible, online learning platforms help ensure fairness and consistency in the evaluation of learner work.

Communication

• Global Interaction : Online learning platforms facilitate connections among learners worldwide, fostering diversity, cultural appreciation, and cross-cultural collaboration in the educational journey. These interactions are particularly significant in today’s interconnected world, as highlighted in our article on the benefits of global collaboration.
• Continuous Support : Learners can reach out to instructors or peers at their convenience, establishing an enduring support network for addressing questions and concerns.
• Collaborative Portfolio: Students can showcase their collaborative work in a digital portfolio, a valuable asset for future career opportunities.

Real-Time Teaching

• Learner Inclusivity: Surveys and polls can be answered anonymously in virtual learning platform, helping anxious and indifferent learners overcome barriers to participation. Classroom signals, such as reaction emojis, also encourage broader engagement during lessons.
• Lesson efficiency: Digital hand-raising minimises unnecessary disruptions in the classroom, ensuring a maintained lesson flow.
• Immediate Feedback : Timely feedback on interactive assessments and quizzes promotes a deeper understanding of material among students, and allows them to make targeted improvements based on observed strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, teachers can employ interactive surveys and polls to gather immediate insights into students’ comprehension and learning preferences.
• Interactive Learning: Real-time functionalities foster a dynamic learning environment, enabling learners to pose questions and participate in live debates. This transforms the educational process from passive absorption to active engagement.

• Synchronous Collaboration : Breakout rooms, as well as collaborative workspaces, can play a pivotal role in nurturing teamwork and critical thinking skills.
• Personalised Learning Paths : Learning platforms tailor resources and activities based on students’ recorded progress and performance.
• Data-Driven Interventions : Similarly, instructors can also use data insights to identify at-risk learners and provide targeted support, increasing retention rates.
• Efficient Management : Through task automation, robust data analytics, customisable features, and centralised user management, online learning platforms empower educational institutions to efficiently oversee learners and courses. This not only saves valuable time and resources, but also guarantees a smooth and hassle-free learning experience.

Before searching for an online learning platform, it is important to develop a procurement strategy tailored to your students’ and institution’s needs. This will enable you to outline specific objectives that act as a vital foundation for effective market research.

On EdTech Impact, we map solutions with their impact (the outcomes they claim to improve). This categorisation allows you to align your market research with the solutions that best match your objectives. Here’s our top-level taxonomy:

Identifying the Role of your Online Learning Platform

Despite their seeming simplicity, educators commonly harbour misconceptions regarding online learning platforms. More alarmingly, these misconceptions often relate to their everyday employment in education.

Microsoft “The biggest misconception with learning platforms is that they are static, passive, and used for consumption of content.”

Satchel One “People often believe an online learning platform will provide content for learning and replace the need for teachers.”

So what role should online learning platforms actually have in education?

Microsoft “The best online learning platforms are dynamic. They allow learners to communicate, create content, and get real time feedback, and give educators seamless insights into the learning behaviours, social emotional health, and progress of their students.”

Satchel One “A well-delivered online learning platform can become the hub of a school classroom and an essential piece of the teaching and learning puzzle. It can better support students with diverse needs by facilitating clear and accurate learning instruction, organised homework and revision, and timely, personalised support from teachers.”

Evidently, though online learning platforms can function as content repositories, this represents far too reductive a role for systems so multifaceted. Their best use, then, is as an assistive and dynamic tool that continuously supports the developing needs of your institution and its students.

The specific nature of this role, however, comes down to you.

Who is your Target Audience?

Before conducting market research, be sure that your procurement strategy is shaped around your institution’s specific contextual needs.

To provide you with a useful initial reference, we have conducted market research on the intended learner age groups of online learning platforms, and their propensity to provide parent access:

Evaluating User Outcomes to Shape Effective Market Research

Effectively understanding the objectives of online learning platforms provides essential context for shaping your market research. This means understanding precisely what goals the market’s solutions aim to achieve, and how effectively users perceive them to actually deliver them.

To help with this, we conducted an analysis of our online learning platforms, uncovering the most common solution outcomes that providers target and their observed impact . Here are the results:

This data, coupled with a well-considered procurement strategy, provides an excellent benchmark for shaping your market research. It enables you to gain insights into the observed strengths and weaknesses of online learning platforms, as well as understand which outcomes they target most frequently.

Leveraging User Reviews for Key Insights

However, whilst general user data on impact is valuable, it should not be the sole driving force behind your decision-making process. Effective market research will establish why individual products either support (or don’t support) outcomes aligned with their strategy, and will compare the context a product was used in to their own.

Using User Evaluations to Uncover Nuanced Insights

At EdTech Impact, our user reviews go beyond a single rating and comment. Instead, our reviewers map ratings to each of the solution’s purported outcomes, and provide an accompanying rating and summary. This maximises the potential for uncovering insights about online learning platforms that directly pertain to your market research objectives.

For instance, if a learning platform is recognised for ‘improving school processes’, you would want to know how it accomplishes this goal. Does it streamline existing processes, or does it introduce new procedures? Similarly, if a platform is found to ‘Improve Parental Engagement,’ what is the extent and nature of the parental involvement it allegedly fosters?

The Power of a Review

Let’s illustrate the significance of this approach with a real-world example.

In the below review of EDClass, our user awarded the platform’s ability to ‘Build Student Knowledge’ five stars. However, this wasn’t predicated on the solution’s comprehensive content hub or personalised learning support, as one might assume. Instead, the reviewer was impressed that EDClass ensured that more challenging students could learn remotely and receive live support, thus enabling them to continue their education:

“A lot of students at risk of permanent exclusion have low attainment levels due to being constantly excluded, in isolation, or out of the classroom. Having EDClass means we can offer high quality lessons and live support to these students, rather than leave them to work independently.”

While ratings provide a useful snapshot of a solution, it is the detail found in user reviews that really illuminates the mechanisms at play. This deeper understanding is crucial for selecting a solution aligned to the needs outlined in your procurement strategy.

Comparing Reviewer Context to your Own

In addition to providing judgements on specific outcomes, we actively encourage our reviewers to provide detailed contextual information. This includes school-specific information, such as their institution and staff role, as well as usage pattern insights, including how long and how often they used the solution. 

After all, since numerous factors can influence a user’s experience with a solution, the most effective way to discern the relevance of someone’s assessment is to compare their situation to your own.

Training and Support

With EdTech systems, their ability to positively impact teaching and learning is analogous to an architect’s knowledge of their blueprint. Users must be well-versed in their features, and possess the confidence to implement them effectively.

This is extremely pertinent among learning platforms, given their typically comprehensive blueprints. Consequently, in your market research, it is crucial to understand what training and support is offered by each solution. Here’s what our analysis found:

Remember, technology isn’t always immediately accessible, so its success often hinges on the availability of comprehensive training and support. Be sure to keep this in mind as you conduct your market research.

Pricing Models and Costs

When it comes to budgeting, it is important to understand the pricing models commonly employed in the online learning platform market, along with their associated costs. Depending on your circumstances, the model offered may not be right for you. 

Using the EdTech Impact marketplace, we’ve unearthed the prevalence of specific pricing models adopted by our learning platforms, and calculated their average and median cost:

Please note that the guidance and market research in this guide is centred around online learning platforms. For general support with purchasing EdTech solutions, including key questions to ask solution providers and quality benchmarks to look out for, have a read of our EdTech Buyers’ Guide .

Half of our online learning platforms were founded before 2013, establishing this category as somewhat mature in the world of EdTech. However, among the remaining 50%, two newcomers – founded in 2020 and 2021, respectively – have surged to become among our top five most-reviewed platforms.

This highlights the likely continuation of online learning platforms as essential cornerstones within teaching and learning. But what exactly does the future hold? How do online learning platforms plan to keep up with transformative changes in modern education?

Here’s what our experts had to say: 

“AI will continue to carve a path for itself into learning platforms and LMS. As long as AI is implemented with rigour and fidelity, this can begin to tackle teacher workload and better support a wider range of students too, by streamlining processes and creating quality learning content that is tailored to the level and preferred learning styles of individuals.” – Satchel One

The future of learning platforms sits with the power of AI to create truly personalised learning experiences for students, help teachers create the most relevant and impactful activities to accelerate learning, and provide coaching tools to help empower students to own their learning. – Microsoft

“Adaptive learning. Using algorithms, adaptive learning technology constantly measures a learner’s engagement and performance to identify patterns and trends, which then allows it to adjust the type of content it pushes out.

Furthermore, educational institutions are becoming increasingly “data powered” and “data driven” globally. An investment into learning platforms without true data capabilities, therefore, is an investment in the past.” – Claned

In each comment, the emphasis on AI’s role in reshaping modern education through personalised learning strategies is evident. To be at the forefront of this transformation, view your online learning platform as a dynamic support tool, rather than a mere content repository.

Updated on: 15 November 2023

Discover the best EdTech

9 most popular edtech categories.

5 online platforms to help students with essay writing

When a student enrols in college or university, an essential aspect of their student experience is marked by their involvement in essay writing for academic purposes.

For many international students who further their education in an English-speaking university, essay writing may be challenging as they are required to adapt to a new curriculum and write content using the right grammar, vocabulary and context in a language they haven’t quite mastered yet.

Luckily, there are a number of essay writing tools that are accessible for free or for a small fee online. These online resources are a haven for students to refer to when brushing up on their comprehension, grammar and vocabulary.

Do note that essay writing tools are not the same as essay writing services.

It is unethical to enlist the help of an online provider to write the assignment on behalf of the student as it defeats the purpose of the journey and learning processes taken to complete the assignment. Students are meant to spend time researching, checking resources and consulting their lecturers for feedback to come up with a high-quality assignment.

Online essay writing tools are meant to guide and facilitate students with their learning process. With that being said, here are five platforms to help students with their essay writing.

Platforms to help students with essay writing

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Grammarly (@grammarly)

Students who struggle with grammar and spelling will find Grammarly ideal. Grammarly is the go-to online platform to ensure content does not contain many errors, including grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors.

Besides being an excellent proofreading platform, Grammarly offers suggestions to improve the clarity of their content to make it more easily understood to their audience. Synonym suggestions help readers to apply different words to their sentence to make it more readable and precise. 

Additionally, Grammarly provides a plagiarism checking service to ensure that their content is unique. 

Grammarly is mostly free , however, additional features can be accessed by paying a premium which can go up to 30 US dollars a month.

Hemingway Editor

Hemingway App makes writing bold and clear http://t.co/rIajo9q1KC pic.twitter.com/8S2hjQ0d8F — O’Reilly Media (@OReillyMedia) February 12, 2014

The Hemingway Editor App helps students to make their writing bold and clear. Whether they are a beginner or a professional writer, this word processor helps writers to create simple, concise and engaging content. Amendments to sentences created by the writer is colour coded.

Hemingway Editor can be accessed for free online . However, the desktop version on Mac and PC costs a one-time payment of US$19.99.

A Research Guide

A Research Guide provides students with essential guidelines on how hone their academic writing skills. Source: A Research Guide

If students are looking for a one-stop centre to learn all things related to writing a research paper for academic purposes, A Research Guide is an information haven for students to refer to.

From learning how to get started with a research paper, including content that fulfils the requirements of the assignment brief all the way to coming up with a strong conclusion, A Research Guide gives you the tools to guide you in writing your research paper every step of the way.

Among the writing guides provided by the platform include how to use search engines, using the correct format and quote passages and how to write a bibliography. Samples of essays in different categories are also available to give students an idea of what a well written essay looks like.

A Research Guide is free and can be accessed here .

Open and free! 🗝️ Journals, books, images, primary source materials, and research reports from JSTOR and Artstor are at your fingertips. 🔖 Bookmark this page to explore all of the #OpenAccess content JSTOR has to offer. Begin your research with a search! https://t.co/4BSZ8zl8KP pic.twitter.com/PF07eNZEDx — JSTOR (@JSTOR) April 4, 2022

Students who struggle to find content that have been cited or provided in an academic context may flock to JSTOR, which is an online archive containing lots of different academic journals and books.

Navigating the JSTOR archive is straightforward, as students can search a database of journals, books, research reports, pamphlets and other learning resources by simply keying in the author, subject (keyword) or title.

JSTOR may require a fee to access most of its contents. However, students can still access public domain resources on JSTOR for free, with an additional six articles per month that are free to access.

Should this not be possible, students may pay for a JPASS which costs U$19.50 a month. However, it is possible for students to login to JSTOR and access materials for free using their university credentials as most universities have a paid subscription to it.

Small SEO Tools 

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by SMALL SEO TOOLS (@smallseo.tools)

Occasionally, students may feel overwhelmed by the need to rephrase or formulate a sentence using their own words, resorting to copying word-for-word what the original author or site mentions in their article.

This is a cardinal sin as plagiarism is frowned upon and may have dire consequences . This includes failing the course to getting expelled.

Plagiarism checkers such as Small SEO Tools helps students to avoid making this mistake. Small SEO tools is free if the content checked is under 1,000 words. More words can be checked for a higher fee .

Popular stories

Birds, bulls, critters and corn the most iconic university mascots today.

How to be smart, charming and powerful: The degrees of the world’s most famous villains

What are the most densely populated countries in the world?

More doing, less typing: 8 degrees that have little to no essay writing

Grammar check: 5 free online tools for international students

5 tips to successfully tackle your first academic essay

How to write better university assignments

7 Online Platforms to Improve Your Essay Writing Skills and Become an A Student

• POSTED ON June 29, 2023
• by Skill Success

[Level Up Your Life]  With a growing library of 3,000+ on-demand video courses, you can level up at your own pace.

Click here to get your All Access Pass today

Academic writing is among the most often assigned homework tasks in all its varieties of papers  and different requirements. Students are required to write essays, lab reports, research papers,  reviews, applications, and other pieces of writing all the time and always look for additional help to  succeed with these assignments and be more productive. 

When it goes to an absolute time-saving way of being on time with homework papers, a cheap essay  writing service usually comes to mind first. They help students to overcome writing difficulties and  master the writing from the examples. The second, more time-consuming way is using a set of  various helpful platforms and applications, which can help to learn formatting rules, or avoid  popular cliches in writing, or generate some simple titles for academic papers and develop them  further in writing. So, let’s first define when students need to use some additional tools to become  better at writing and then move on to our list of the most helpful resources. We tried to gather the  most versatile of them to cover all the needs. 

Why Students Need Online Platforms to Improve Their Essay Writing Skills 

They want to cope with the assignments independently and find additional tools to ease the writing. With online platforms, students can work at their own tempo, focusing on the areas where they want  the maximum improvement. This independence fosters self-directed mastering, permitting college  students to develop their writing abilities in a way that fits their personal wishes and gain  knowledge of style. For example, by using the Thesaurus, students tend to be only smarter but also  learn new words and meanings of phrases they don’t understand. 

This was the main reason, and the second one – they wanted to become more confident and  proficient in writing. Writing may be intimidating for lots of students, particularly whilst they’re  unsure about their talents. Online tools can improve college students’ self-belief by using imparting  them with the gear, expertise, and practice possibilities they want to turn out to be more gifted  writers. As they see their writing abilities enhance through the years, their self-belief grows, and  they become greater inclined to tackle writing obligations.

7 Online Platforms to Improve Your Essay Writing Skills 

Essay title generator .

Each great piece of writing starts with an outstanding topic, and sometimes it takes ages to think it  over and to follow the instructor’s requirements concerning the topic aspects. The essay title  generator can help you with this easily. How does it work? You type the general words of your  topic, for example, cyber security, climate change, presentation, bullying, revolutions, and so on,  use filters, and receive suggestions on various topics.

Help In Homework stands as our top pick among online essay writing platforms. It presents a comprehensive spectrum of services, encompassing elementary essays and assignments, advanced college-level compositions such as case studies and research proposals, and even encompasses the intricate realms of thesis and dissertation composition. The pricing structure is exceedingly reasonable, commencing at a mere $12 per page for high school-level tasks. The process of placing an order is remarkably straightforward and user-friendly, ensuring swift paper completion for all. Furthermore, Help In Homework boasts an adept team of seasoned writers who are poised to provide expert guidance on crafting effective essays and papers.

Citation Machine 

And other similar tools of such type help to cite your sources correctly in formats like MLA, APA,  Harvard, and others you may need. You can improve your existing bibliography or add the sources  you worked on for your paper and get its formatted version. This source also allows us to check  students’ papers for plagiarism and find useful guides about various formatting styles. 

The Purdue Owl 

It is a commonly known website with tons of advice, writing guides, and tips, where each student  will find anything needed. One can find a lot of academic paper writing guides there, a lot of  samples with detailed explanations. You can hang on the site for hours.

Grammar Checkers 

The most known of them are Grammarly, Hemingway Editor, Ginger, WhiteSmoke, and others.  Some of them offer free services; some require a minimal price. You can use them right in the  process of writing or checking the whole paper. And follow their recommendations on grammar and  stylistic mistakes, sentence structure, and others. You can also find explanations of the errors in  some of them and be acknowledged about them next time. 

750 words is a great tool for training, practicing, and improving your writing skills every day,  where you can track your progress, speed of writing, and other issues. The website helps to create a  habit of writing on a daily basis. You can also find a lot of writing exercises online – from easy, like  describing your dog, to telling about yourself in 100 different words not connected with each other. 

This is a huge video library that offers a series of video lessons on writing and communication  skills. Their lessons cover topics like storytelling, essay structure, persuasive writing, and more. The  engaging videos can provide inspiration and tips for enhancing your essay writing abilities. You can  develop your critical thinking , for example, by using their advice or finding a lot of videos about  creativity, information literacy, fact-checking, and millions of other topics. 

Cliche Finders

Cliché finder tools can be useful for students in essay writing to identify and avoid overused or trite  phrases that can weaken their writing. Firstly, they are needed to identify the cliches, such as “to  think outside the box,” and get to know the ways of replacing them. Secondly, they are used to  improve the originality and clarity of a student paper to make it fresh and stand out. Thirdly, the  student’s personal voice is developed in such a manner, and the paper uniqueness as well. 

It’s also important to consider the context and purpose of the essay when using cliché finder tools.  While clichés should generally be avoided, there may be instances where their use can be  appropriate, such as in a dialogue or when deliberately employing a cliché for a specific effect.  Cliché finder tools can help students identify instances where clichés are being used unintentionally  or inappropriately. 

Remember, consistent practice, seeking feedback, and revising your work are essential for  improving your essay writing skills. These online platforms can serve as valuable resources to  support your learning journey. Do not also hesitate to ask others to help you with writing or simply  reading your paper and giving you some advice on how it can be improved and what points should  be omitted. 

Be the best student in your class with our writing tips and tools.

Ready to fully dive into your learning? Join All Access Pass and unlock our entire course library for only $15/month.

Click here to learn more

Skill Success

Browse all categories, related posts, advantages and disadvantages of social media for students, what causes lack of self-awareness, 10 prominent generation x characteristics in the workplace, everything you need to know about advanced corporate training programs, 10 benefits of using automation in the insurance industry.

Be the first to get the newest articles!

Get free articles weekly and put your skills on turbo mode. Subscribe with your email today.

Look out for useful articles and resources delivered straight to your inbox.

Looking for a solution to discover, change, or advance your career?

Get all access pass for only $15/month and unlock 3,000+ online video courses today..

SKILLSUCCESS.com 2024 All rights reserved

Online courses.

Software Tutorials

Personal Development

Career Development

Become an Instructor

Support FAQs

Create An Account

All Access Pass

Terms of Use

Privacy Policy

SKILLSUCCESS.com 2022 All rights reserved

Join our newsletter and get your first course free!

Congratulations! You get one free course of your choice. Please check your email now for the redemption code.

Subscribe For Success!

Get fresh content every week to upgrade your skills today!

• Terms and Conditions
• Privacy Policy

How Online Learning Platforms Helping Students Get Through the Pandemic

Online learning became more popular even before the pandemic hit, and multiple online universities were ranking next to well-known universities with campuses. However, we recognized the real importance of this gem as Covid-19 swept the world into uncertainty. In a move that no one anticipated, the disease led to a massive lockdown and quarantine, causing educational institutes to shut down worldwide.

Suddenly, students accustomed to classes in person had to resort to staring at their screens for hours. Though, all was not lost. As online learning became more popular, it had already reached a height where the shift to online learning was smooth and quite helpful. With a plethora of online lectures, courses, quizzes, and available online, alongside the newly devised online teaching systems, research has shown a relatively increased learning level in students.

Source: Generation T

How did institutes respond to the pandemic?

What does the future look like for students’ education, methodology, is online learning as effective.

Countries worldwide were affected severely due to the sudden pandemic; over 1.2 billion children in 186 countries were affected by the closure of educational institutes. A sudden high demand for online learning platforms arose, so many widely known companies worked on improving their platforms and introducing advanced and faster platforms that students can use to study efficiently.

Applications like Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams helped these institutes cope with the sudden demand. Some institutes resorted to establishing their platforms, while some issued memberships and partnerships for their targeted student body.

Source: Reelae

While it has become a general opinion that online learning has led to decreased education and understanding and increased procrastination, research and real-life examples beg to differ. Multiple universities around the world were quick to transition, uploading their courses online throughout a short period. Zhejiang University, for example, uploaded over 5000 courses online over a short period of two weeks.

Similarly, this sudden change hasn’t been too harsh on student’s lives. All their course material is now available at one place at their disposal to use as they please. Many people believe that even after the pandemic ends, the online learning systems will stick due to their efficiency and accessibility. Almost everyone who receives a formal education has access to an internet connection .

Source: Best Online Courses

As the pandemic took over, it provided the necessary boost for online learning to become the ultimate education source. Classes take place at their scheduled times, conforming to a standard set by educational institutions.

Course material, as well as recorded lectures, are provided to the students via an all-access platform. Through this, students can now do the impossible and turn back time to listen to the lessons again and absorb anything they may have missed.

A personalized study plan accompanied by customized tutoring caters to questioning and practice material provided to the students. All professors usually follow a course outline, which leads to schedule power throughout the course. All in all, it’s an effective way for students and teachers to communicate with each other with ease.

Source: Create Online Courses

Multiple students around the world were asked this question as the pandemic took over the world. The students appreciate the online resources provided to them and the tools and platforms used by professors and teachers to convey information. With the right technology and the right media provided to the students, online learning could very well open new doors to improved learning.

Contrary to the traditional classroom where the students had to keep up with the teacher’s pace and their classmates to learn the material, now, they’re able to work their way through courses at their own pace- allowing for re-reading, improved learning, and better absorption of content than before.

With active online classes, the live interactions keep the student’s attention throughout the lecture, and with all the content being later provided to the student to review. This content provides the perfect opportunity for students to revise their concepts according to their mental capacity, personalization, and intelligence.

There have been multiple introductions of platforms around the world that aim to aid students in their learning. Websites have been introduced that support online learning amidst this Covid-19 era. You can find an example of this in Studypool .

This platform helps students’ study with access to research material, including questions and notes available at the student’s disposal. It also offers on-demand online tutoring so students can get immediate help if stuck on a difficult topic or problem.

The challenges of online learning

With its benefits, there also exist drawbacks that come with online learning. Online learning is a concept that entirely relies on the internet. However, multiple students worldwide lack a reliable internet connection or even the technology that caters to this. Hence, comes the rift between the privileged and the under-privileged. In this case, privilege works its magic; the one with the better technology has more resources available at their disposal than those with financial troubles.

Some institutes worldwide have been active enough to provide some of their students with the necessary technology required. Nevertheless, it still does not entirely solve the problem. The future may look bright for online learning, but yet again has been ruled by privilege, promoting the digital divide more than ever before.

A solution to this is a more widespread distribution of tech to the underprivileged and efficient platforms that work even in older technology models.

Source: Kliwo

Before the pandemic took over, students all over were used to this repetitive traditional way of learning. However, it proved to be a wake-up call for educational institutions to improve their learning and cater more to the student with its spread. Instead of just delivering information, these online platforms help this knowledge reach their students smoothly.

Online learning innovatively cushioned the mass uncertainty that came with the closure of all educational institutions. Hence, introducing a more efficient, improved way of learning that benefits students worldwide.

Petar Senjo

A creative writer with a keen eye for SEO. Combining his love for the latest news with his expertise in search engine optimization, Petar delivers impactful content that resonates with readers.

Part of the Reason Why People Have Human Hair Lace Front Wig – 2024 Guide

How to get a loan without proof of income, related posts, writing hacks for busy students: 8 tips for..., content marketing: creating compelling stories to attract students, geometry homework help to meet your learning goals.

• Relationships
• Entertainment

Terms and Conditions - Privacy Policy

Executive Programs

Student Reviews

For Business

Academic Training

Informative Articles

We are Hiring!

All Courses

Choose a category

Uploaded on

07 Jul 2023

How to choose the right online learning platform: A guide for students

In today's competitive world, students often find themselves seeking guidance and support beyond what traditional education can offer. That's where mentorship programs come into play, bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical skills. 

This article explores the immense value of mentorship programs in connecting students with industry experts. By delving into the benefits, challenges, and strategies for successful mentorship, we shed light on how this symbiotic relationship can shape the future of aspiring professionals. From mentorship matching to fostering meaningful connections, this piece serves as a comprehensive guide to help students navigate the world of mentorship and unlock their full potential.

So without any further ado, let’s get right into it!

Benefits of online learning for students

• Personalized guidance: Mentorship provides students with individualized attention and guidance, helping them navigate their educational journey effectively. Mentors offer personalized support, understanding each student's strengths, weaknesses, and learning styles.
• Career exploration: Mentors can help students explore different career paths and provide insights into real-world experiences. They can share their expertise, industry knowledge, and advice, helping students make informed decisions about their future.
• Motivation and confidence: A mentor acts as a source of motivation and inspiration for students. They provide encouragement, set goals, and push students to reach their full potential. This support boosts students' confidence, self-esteem, and belief in their abilities.
• Networking opportunities: Mentors often have extensive networks within their fields. They can introduce students to professionals, organizations, and internship opportunities, expanding their network and providing valuable connections for future career prospects.
• Academic success: Mentorship can contribute to academic success by fostering a positive learning environment. Mentors can assist students in setting academic goals, developing study skills, and providing resources for further learning. They also offer constructive feedback and help students overcome challenges.
• Personal development: Mentorship extends beyond academics, focusing on holistic development. Mentors serve as role models, imparting life skills, values, and character-building lessons. They guide decision-making, time management, and problem-solving.
• Support system: Having a mentor creates a strong support system for students. They have someone to turn to for advice, guidance, and emotional support. Mentors can offer a listening ear and help students navigate personal challenges, ensuring their overall well-being.

Overall, mentorship plays a crucial role in education by providing personalized guidance, fostering motivation, facilitating career exploration, and contributing to overall academic and personal development. It is a valuable resource that empowers students to achieve their goals and succeed in their educational pursuits.

If you're currently intrigued to learn about Skill-Lync and our online learning mentorship programs, continue reading as we shed light on them just below.

Overview of Skill-Lync 

Skill-Lync, an online learning platform catering exclusively to engineers, provides a wide range of online courses and training workshops in collaboration with industry experts and seasoned professionals. It aims to empower engineering students by equipping them with new skills and capabilities. By enrolling in Skill-Lync's online courses, engineers have the opportunity to upskill themselves and gain industry-relevant knowledge in various engineering domains.

Skill-Lync offers a diverse selection of online courses and certificate programs in streams of engineering such as: 

• Electronics
• Computer science

Upon completing these courses, learners also receive placement assistance from Skill-Lync, increasing their chances of securing well-paid professional opportunities.

The value of Skill-Lync certificates surpasses that of many other e-learning platforms, and numerous learners have reaped the benefits of these online courses. With Skill-Lync, engineers can expand their skill sets, enhance their career prospects, and stay ahead in the competitive engineering industry.

Introduction to Skill-Lync's Mentorship Program

Skill-Lync's Mentorship Program is an exceptional initiative that provides aspiring engineers and designers with invaluable guidance and support in their pursuit of career excellence. With a strong emphasis on practical learning and industry-relevant skills, this program offers a unique opportunity to connect with experienced professionals who serve as mentors.

These programs seek to fill the gap between academic knowledge and real-world applications. Through one-on-one mentorship, participants gain access to the expertise and insights of mentors who have excelled in their respective fields. These mentors come from diverse backgrounds and possess a wealth of industry experience, allowing them to provide personalized guidance tailored to each mentee's goals and aspirations.

It offers a structured curriculum that covers a wide range of technical disciplines. Mentees have the opportunity to work on industry-inspired projects, enabling them to apply their knowledge in practical scenarios and gain hands-on experience. Moreover, the mentorship program incorporates regular feedback sessions; ensuring mentees receive constructive criticism and guidance for continuous improvement.

Things to consider when choosing an online learning platform

Here are the key criteria we consider crucial when selecting online mentorship programs:

• Accreditation: Ensure that the online learning platform is accredited by a recognized accrediting body or institution. Accreditation guarantees that the courses and programs meet specific quality standards.
• Course variety: Look for an online learning platform that offers a wide range of courses and programs across different subjects and disciplines. This allows you to explore various areas of interest and find courses that align with your educational goals.
• Reputation and reviews: Research the reputation of the online learning platform by reading reviews and testimonials from current and past students. Choose platforms that have positive feedback and a track record of providing quality education.
• Instructor quality: Consider the qualifications and experience of the instructors who teach the courses. Check if they have relevant expertise in the subject matter and if they are respected in their field. Experienced and knowledgeable instructors can significantly enhance your learning experience.
• Flexibility and convenience: Evaluate the platform's flexibility in terms of course schedules and learning formats. Look for platforms that offer self-paced learning options or flexible schedules to accommodate your needs. Additionally, consider the availability of mobile apps or offline access for learning on the go.
• Interactive learning tools: Assess the platform's interactive learning tools and features. Look for features such as discussion forums, virtual classrooms, multimedia resources, and interactive assessments that enhance the learning experience and promote engagement.
• Support and resources: Inquire about the kind of support and resources available to students. This may include access to academic advisors, technical support, library resources, and career services. Sufficient support can greatly contribute to your success in online learning.
• Cost and value: Evaluate the cost of the courses or programs offered by the platform and compare it with similar offerings from other platforms. Consider the value you will receive in terms of the quality of education, course materials, and support services.
• Technical requirements: Ensure that you have the necessary technology and infrastructure to access the online learning platform. Check the compatibility of the platform with your devices, internet speed requirements, and any software or plugins needed for the courses.
• Industry recognition: Find out if the online learning platform is well-regarded and recognized within the industry or field you are interested in. Some platforms have partnerships with reputable organizations or industry leaders, which can enhance the credibility of the courses.
• Learning support and community: Assess the level of learning support and community engagement provided by the platform. Look for platforms that offer opportunities to interact with fellow students, collaborate on projects, and receive guidance from instructors.

Remember, choosing the right online learning platform is crucial for your educational journey. Take the time to research and evaluate different options to find the platform that best aligns with your goals, preferences, and learning style.

We can assure you that Skill-Lync meets all the criteria mentioned above. Therefore, you can place your trust in us without hesitation, knowing that with our guidance, you can achieve success in your future career.

In today's competitive landscape, pursuing a career in any engineering field is no easy feat. It demands a comprehensive understanding and a well-honed skill set to surpass the competition. To achieve this, seeking professional guidance becomes essential. Skill-Lync provides invaluable guidance that can significantly benefit your journey.

Schedule a free course demo with our experts today. 

Anup KumarH S

Subscribe to Our Free Newsletter

Continue Reading

Related Blogs

Explore the fundamentals of vehicle dynamics and ultimate trends in the field from design and modeling to control with Skill Lync's exclusive course on the subject. Read about how Skill-Lync's CAE courses can help you get employed.

29 Jul 2020

In this article, we will briefly discuss the working, applications, and features of the one-dimensional systematic simulation tool, GT-Power, in Emission Control Strategy, engine calibration, hybrid vehicle modeling. Read about how Skill-Lync's CAE courses can help you get employed.

This article offers a brief introduction to the globally accepted standard of Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing, and its importance for the entire manufacturing process. Read about how Skill-Lync's CAE courses can help you get employed.

In this blog we will read about Going a step into Biomechanics and how Skill-Lync's CAE course will help you get employed.

10 May 2020

The powertrain is the most prominent source of vibrations that affects the driving experience for the people on board. This blog from Skill-Lync examines these vibrations to help enhance that experience.

22 Aug 2020

Related Courses

The Role of Digital Learning Platforms in the Academic Growth of Students

What is a digital learning platform.

Gone are the days when learning was restricted to the classroom, with the instructor being the primary source of knowledge. Digital technology has unshackled learning, providing learners a wealth of opportunities to learn what they want to learn, how they want to learn, and where they want to learn with just a few clicks of the mouse.

While the role of the instructor remains undiminished, students today have several resources at their fingertips, allowing them to take control and self-direct their learning.

A digital learning platform can be a learning management system (LMS) or learning content management systems (LCMS). It can also be a virtual classroom tool or a virtual learning environment (VLE).

While each platform varies in function and features, all digital learning platforms can support all types of learning, i.e., online learning , classroom learning, and blended learning .

With the Internet and digital technology becoming an integral aspect of our lives, education too, has gone online, mandating specialized technology solutions to support online learning.

The COVID 19 pandemic has given a major boost to online education. As a result, all educational institutions including schools, colleges, universities and vocational institutions have already adopted or are in the process of adopting a digital learning platform to support learning.

How Do Digital Learning Platforms Foster Overall Academic Growth in Students?

Easy access to information.

A digital learning platform allows access to a complete library of online resources. The software is structured to organize information in a way that makes it easily accessible to all users. The learning material can be in the form of courses, multimedia content, archives and evaluations. All students can access the information anytime and from anywhere with the help of the Internet and a reading device of their choice, be it a laptop, tablet or a smartphone. Then there is also the option to download material and access for offline use.

Up-to-date content

A digital learning platform allows educational institutions to cost-effectively and instantly update course content or add additional materials and resources, which students can access to support their learning.

Advanced reporting

These innovative digital learning solutions allow the educators to create, personalize, and download reports that provide insights into the learners’ progress, work completion, individual and group progress etc.

The course admins and instructors can use these insights to give individual attention to students, helping them to overcome barriers in their learning journeys. Students can also trace their progress and make efforts to be at par with the rest of the class.  

Multimedia learning

With digital learning platforms, you can create multimedia content to engage the learners, immerse them in activities, stimulate interest, bring alive abstract concepts, and provide context to learning.

Multimedia content in the form of video, images, audio and text makes learning fun and entertaining, allowing students to gain new skills and information.

New communication channels

Digital learning platforms take conversations out of bounds of the physical classroom. Students can use platforms such as chat, social media channels and online forums to learn, discuss, and debate in a more collaborative, interactive, and personal learning environment.

They can interact with their teachers, peers and external communities via emails and messages. With communication tools, they can communicate with their classmates right away and resolve their issues as they arise.

24X7 Access to learning resources

Learning never comes to an end with a digital learning platform. Students don’t have to worry if the school library or lab is closed. They can access their resources online 24-hours a day, 365 days a year.

They can even perform science experiments in simulated environments from the comfort of their own space. It has been observed that not all students are active at the same time.

Some find it easier to focus in the evening or at night. Having access to educational resources at all times helps to foster learning even after regular school hours.

Self-directed study

Digital learning platforms enable self-directed learning. In a classroom, you can ask your teacher if you are struggling with a question. However, finding answers yourself is a great feeling.

Self-directed learning is an important aspect of higher education – students find their own answers without being directed by the teacher. Self-directed learning instills in learners skills that will hold them in good stead in their careers.

With technology and knowledge constantly evolving, people have to be constantly on their toes to reskill and upskill. Self-directed study helps students to identify areas they’re good at, and the areas where they might need to work a little harder.

In conclusion

As technology makes in-roads, it becomes crucial for educational institutions to harness it to their advantage. Schools and higher education institutions are increasingly adopting digital learning platforms to support student learning and foster their academic growth. Cloud-based digital learning platforms provide 24×7 access to learning resources. They can even download the course content for offline use. These platforms also offer a range of communication tools for students to communicate with instructors and peers. 

For instance, they can post their queries on a forum and invite a response from both teachers and fellow students. Rather than wait for the next day to ask a question, they can use chat or email their instructors for a more immediate response. Then there are other tools and features that allow them to collaborate and work as a team. Students can also self-direct their studies, and in the process identify weak areas and strong points. 

Finally, digital learning platforms provide them hands-on experience in using technology, a skill that will hold them in good stead when they seek careers in the real world.

To know more, please write to us at [email protected]

Suggested Reads:

• How to Create an Interactive eBook in 10 Steps
• 8 Smart Ways to Use Interactive eBooks in Classrooms
• Complete guide on ePUB DRM security
• Top Trends Higher Education Textbook Publishers Must Follow
• Which are the best ePUB DRM solutions for protecting your files?

Discover How An Ebook Conversion, Publishing & Distribution Platform Can Help You

Kitaboo is a cloud-based content platform to create-publish & securely distribute interactive mobile-ready ebooks.

You May Also Like

Creating Compelling Enriched eBooks: A Step-by-Step Guide

Blog , Digital Publishing , eBook solution / January 19, 2024

Top 12 Applications of AI and Augmented Reality in Education

Blog , Digital Publishing , eBook solution / March 30, 2023

Interactive eBook Creator: Innovating the Reading Experience for All

Blog , Digital Publishing , eBook solution / January 29, 2024

Mike Harman

Mike is the SVP Business Development at HurixDigital. He has over 30 years experience in achieving consistent top-line revenue growth and building mutually beneficial relationships

More Resources

• Whitepapers
• How To Guides
• Product Videos
• Infographics
• Kitaboo FAQs

Request a Demo

An enterprise platform that 15 million users trust

Kitaboo Product Video

Recent Posts

Protecting eBook Files: Advanced DRM and Encryption Techniques

eReader Platforms: Empowering Publishers in the Digital Age

Free vs. Fee: Demystifying Online Book Publishing Platforms

Effortless Ways to Convert PDFs with Images to ePUB

• Digital Publishing
• DRM for eBooks
• eBook solution
• eBook Store
• Education Technology
• Employee Training
• ePUB Conversion
• Frankfuter Buchmesse
• Nonprofit Organizations & Associations
• Self-publishing
• Uncategorized
• XML Conversion

Get the latest posts delivered right to your email.

Sign up to Newsletter

Press & media.

• Press Releases
• News Section

Quick links

• About Hurix Systems
• KITABOO for K12 Publishers
• KITABOO for Associations and Non-profit
• KITABOO for Higher Education Publishers
• Digital Content Solutions – HurixDigital
• Terms and Conditions
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy

Resources Links

• Product videos
• Kitaboo Partner Program

Kitaboo Reader

• Convert Fixed PDF / InDesign to Dynamic Content
• Training Solutions
• Online Reader
• Android App
• Windows Store Installer
• Mac Store Installer
• Kitaboo SDK
• Case Studies
• Request A Demo

Privacy Overview

Social Media in the Learning Process – Is It Underestimated? [2024 Guide]

When Covid-19 turned the world upside-down, technologies provided much-needed relief to students. During a year of remote education, online learning platforms proved to be excellent supplements to traditional classes. Social media gives students access to endless resources and opportunities to communicate outside the classroom.

Although many students have already returned to campus, social media platforms remain the leading source of knowledge. Take our blog IvyPanda – not only does it have a free essay database, but it also offers numerous helpful essay-writing tips. In this article, we’ve come up with the best websites you can use to boost your academic performance.

• 📱 Social Media Types
• 🖥️ Social Media & Studying
• ⚖️ Social Media: Pros & Cons
• 🪄 Social Media Benefits
• ⚡ Social Media Risks
• 🧨 Best Social Media Tools

📱 Social Media Types and Examples

When talking about social media platforms, the first thing that comes to mind is Facebook or Instagram. They belong to the social networks category, but many more platforms are available. Social media has developed a lot, and new formats and opportunities have been introduced. In fact, the classification of social media platforms is rapidly changing. Below is the most up-to-date list made by leading experts in the industry.

🖥️ Social Media and Studying – How to Combine the Two?

Social media platforms can benefit your studying in various ways. In this part, we’ll look at several online tools and how to use them for educational purposes.

• When learning a new topic , listen to a podcast that focuses on your subject. Active sensory listening is an effective tool for memorizing facts, especially if it’s a lively discussion.
• If you have an essay to write , check out video essays on YouTube. This type of content can help you fight writer’s block. You can also use video essays as references for your assignment.
• When you need to collect information for your research, consider Twitter as a source. This platform allows you to analyze various opinions on the most controversial topics.
• If you have an art project to do , our top recommendation is Pinterest. You can find mood boards that follow different aesthetics. Such a great source of inspiration!
• If you enjoy a study room format , consider video chats. Join your friends on Zoom, make sure none of you procrastinates, and do your homework together.
• For better concentration , choose calm music playlists . Some even apply the Pomodoro technique , which reminds you when to take a break.
• When you want to learn something new , choose online courses on platforms like Coursera. Their lectures are made by professionals and are often free to watch

⚖️ Social Media in Education: For & Against

The impact of social media on students’ academic performance is a hot topic for debate. For some people, the advantages of social media in education outweigh all the negative effects. However, not everyone believes that using online platforms benefits students. Let’s see what each side thinks.

Arguments Against Social Media in Education

Argument #1.

Using social media for studying can increase cyberbullying . The more time students spend on the Internet, the higher the risk of facing online trolls and cyberbullies.

Argument #2

Social media is addictive and can be demotivating. Even if students browse Facebook for educational purposes, they might be easily distracted by friends’ messages.

Argument #3

Using social media during class can take students away from face-to-face human interaction. Studying is not only about knowledge but also about lively discussions with classmates and professors.

Argument #4

Social media platforms in education belittle the importance of the teacher’s work. Having so many online courses creates the false illusion that students can learn everything independently.

Argument #5

Social media platforms often contain wrong or biased information . Some resources can’t be used for educational purposes if their credibility can’t be checked.

Arguments For Social Media in Education

Social media platforms help students fulfill their creative potential. Not only can they become inspired by other people’s content on Instagram or Pinterest, but they can also create their own.

Students gain access to global knowledge with the help of social media. They can share their academic experience with students from other universities around the world.

Social media is an effective tool for research. For example, Google Scholar gives students access to numerous scientists they can follow in order to be updated about future studies.

Video platforms like Zoom help students with disabilities fully engage in the educational process. For example, the program has a live captions option for people with hearing disabilities.

Social media increases students’ engagement. Since young people devote much time to the Internet, online educational content can be made to seem more attractive and enjoyable.

🪄 Benefits of Using Social Media for Learning

We’ve come up with a list of social media benefits to destroy the myth that social media is a waste of time.

• Social media is an effective and quick communication channel.
• E-learning is only possible with the help of social media platforms.
• Social media gives teachers more tools to get their students’ attention and interest.
• Social media platforms help students demonstrate their creative side.
• The global network makes it possible to learn about other countries and to practice a foreign language .
• Social media makes it easier to collaborate intellectually and socially.
• Social media is full of academic materials that can be used for free.
• Students can learn expert opinions with the help of social networking.
• Students can promote their projects and achievements.
• Students can explore new scientific areas and build their academic paths faster.
• Social media offers new teaching methods that can benefit both students and professors.
• Social media platforms inspire students to study on their own.
• Various news channels on social media can help students to stay up-to-date.
• Reading articles on the Internet helps students to improve their literacy .
• Social media is a never-ending source of inspiration, fulfilling students’ creative potential.

⚡ Risks & Insufficiencies of Using Social Media for Learning

Despite there are many benefits of using social media, it is vital to engage in these platforms carefully. To have the best experience online, consider these risks:

• Social media is created to be addictive, which might cause distraction in the classroom.
• Social media platforms can contain harmful and inappropriate content without proper moderation.
• Spending too much time online can badly influence students’ time-management skills.
• Having easy access to information online can make students less curious or lazy.
• The amount of research papers available on the Internet increases plagiarism rates.
• Using social media in education can expose students to Internet fraud.
• The excessive use of social media for learning can lead to sleeping disorders and depression .
• Social media can reduce students’ attention span.
• Biased articles on social media platforms can badly influence students’ critical thinking.

🧨 Social Media Platforms Teachers & Students Shouldn’t Miss

Online collaboration tools.

Online collaboration tools allow students and professors to communicate with a simple click. To make your studies in Zoom more productive and entertaining, we recommend checking out these websites.

• Twiddla Twiddla is a whiteboard for online classes. It allows professors to demonstrate materials and make notes. Twiddla’s fun design also evokes nostalgia for school days.
• Kahoot This game-based learning platform helps teachers make tests and quizzes on their subjects.
• StudyStream StudyStream offers 24/7 virtual focus rooms for students worldwide, enabling them to make new friends and study more productively.

Websites for Research

Research is essential to writing an essay or other assignment. Most of the existing scientific articles can be found with the help of these online tools.

• Google Scholar Google Scholar gives access to many scientific papers and books. Users can also subscribe to specific authors’ updates and bookmark the works they need.
• Bright Knowledge Bright knowledge is another research database with articles on relatable topics like education, career, and mental health.
• Copyleaks Copyleaks is a top tool for every student to detect plagiarism and paraphrase texts to make them look more academic.

Online Courses and Video Lectures

Online courses are necessary for students who want to deepen their knowledge or try a new scientific field. The following platforms also facilitate communication with experts and other students.

• TedEd Ted Education is an online platform with hundreds of animated lessons to explain the most complex topics in simple words.
• Coursera Coursera has partnerships with leading universities and companies to create affordable and relevant online learning for students worldwide.
• Skillshare Skillshare is another online learning platform that focuses on the creative fields of design, animation, and fashion.

Tools for Creating Presentations and Visuals.

Visuals can make a student’s work stand out. Luckily, there are plenty of online tools with ready-made presentation templates. You can use them even if you know nothing about design!

• Canva Canva gives students all the tools to design a presentation, posters, or graphics.
• Pixelated Pixelated offers thousands of ready-made presentation templates for all possible occasions.
• Pinterest Pinterest is a well-known website with photos divided into thematic categories. They can be used both as inspiration and to illustrate your writings.

The never-ending debate about integrating social media into the educational process causes controversies. Our final thought is that online platforms can boost your academic performance if you use them wisely. Pursue new social media tools in education to become the best version of yourself!

• 10 Social Media Tools Perfectly Suited for e-Learning
• 12 Ways to Use Social Media for Education | Sprout Social
• Using Social Media for Learning | UAGC | University of Arizona Global Campus
• 6 Pros and Cons of Social Media in the Classroom
• Is Social Media Good or Bad for Students? – Education Corner
• Social Media in the Classroom: The Digital Safety Debate
• Benefits and Drawbacks of Social Media in Education | Wisconsin Center for Education Research
• Share via Facebook
• Share via Twitter
• Share via LinkedIn
• Share via email

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, getting college essay help: important do's and don’ts.

College Essays

If you grow up to be a professional writer, everything you write will first go through an editor before being published. This is because the process of writing is really a process of re-writing —of rethinking and reexamining your work, usually with the help of someone else. So what does this mean for your student writing? And in particular, what does it mean for very important, but nonprofessional writing like your college essay? Should you ask your parents to look at your essay? Pay for an essay service?

If you are wondering what kind of help you can, and should, get with your personal statement, you've come to the right place! In this article, I'll talk about what kind of writing help is useful, ethical, and even expected for your college admission essay . I'll also point out who would make a good editor, what the differences between editing and proofreading are, what to expect from a good editor, and how to spot and stay away from a bad one.

Table of Contents

What Kind of Help for Your Essay Can You Get?

What's Good Editing?

What should an editor do for you, what kind of editing should you avoid, proofreading, what's good proofreading, what kind of proofreading should you avoid.

What Do Colleges Think Of You Getting Help With Your Essay?

Who Can/Should Help You?

Advice for editors.

Should You Pay Money For Essay Editing?

The Bottom Line

What's next, what kind of help with your essay can you get.

Rather than talking in general terms about "help," let's first clarify the two different ways that someone else can improve your writing . There is editing, which is the more intensive kind of assistance that you can use throughout the whole process. And then there's proofreading, which is the last step of really polishing your final product.

Let me go into some more detail about editing and proofreading, and then explain how good editors and proofreaders can help you."

Editing is helping the author (in this case, you) go from a rough draft to a finished work . Editing is the process of asking questions about what you're saying, how you're saying it, and how you're organizing your ideas. But not all editing is good editing . In fact, it's very easy for an editor to cross the line from supportive to overbearing and over-involved.

Ability to clarify assignments. A good editor is usually a good writer, and certainly has to be a good reader. For example, in this case, a good editor should make sure you understand the actual essay prompt you're supposed to be answering.

Open-endedness. Good editing is all about asking questions about your ideas and work, but without providing answers. It's about letting you stick to your story and message, and doesn't alter your point of view.

Think of an editor as a great travel guide. It can show you the many different places your trip could take you. It should explain any parts of the trip that could derail your trip or confuse the traveler. But it never dictates your path, never forces you to go somewhere you don't want to go, and never ignores your interests so that the trip no longer seems like it's your own. So what should good editors do?

Help Brainstorm Topics

Sometimes it's easier to bounce thoughts off of someone else. This doesn't mean that your editor gets to come up with ideas, but they can certainly respond to the various topic options you've come up with. This way, you're less likely to write about the most boring of your ideas, or to write about something that isn't actually important to you.

If you're wondering how to come up with options for your editor to consider, check out our guide to brainstorming topics for your college essay .

Help Revise Your Drafts

Here, your editor can't upset the delicate balance of not intervening too much or too little. It's tricky, but a great way to think about it is to remember: editing is about asking questions, not giving answers .

Revision questions should point out:

• Places where more detail or more description would help the reader connect with your essay
• Places where structure and logic don't flow, losing the reader's attention
• Places where there aren't transitions between paragraphs, confusing the reader
• Moments where your narrative or the arguments you're making are unclear

But pointing to potential problems is not the same as actually rewriting—editors let authors fix the problems themselves.

Bad editing is usually very heavy-handed editing. Instead of helping you find your best voice and ideas, a bad editor changes your writing into their own vision.

You may be dealing with a bad editor if they:

• Add material (examples, descriptions) that doesn't come from you
• Use a thesaurus to make your college essay sound "more mature"
• Add meaning or insight to the essay that doesn't come from you
• Tell you what to say and how to say it
• Write sentences, phrases, and paragraphs for you
• Change your voice in the essay so it no longer sounds like it was written by a teenager

Colleges can tell the difference between a 17-year-old's writing and a 50-year-old's writing. Not only that, they have access to your SAT or ACT Writing section, so they can compare your essay to something else you wrote. Writing that's a little more polished is great and expected. But a totally different voice and style will raise questions.

Where's the Line Between Helpful Editing and Unethical Over-Editing?

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether your college essay editor is doing the right thing. Here are some guidelines for staying on the ethical side of the line.

• An editor should say that the opening paragraph is kind of boring, and explain what exactly is making it drag. But it's overstepping for an editor to tell you exactly how to change it.
• An editor should point out where your prose is unclear or vague. But it's completely inappropriate for the editor to rewrite that section of your essay.
• An editor should let you know that a section is light on detail or description. But giving you similes and metaphors to beef up that description is a no-go.

Proofreading (also called copy-editing) is checking for errors in the last draft of a written work. It happens at the end of the process and is meant as the final polishing touch. Proofreading is meticulous and detail-oriented, focusing on small corrections. It sands off all the surface rough spots that could alienate the reader.

Because proofreading is usually concerned with making fixes on the word or sentence level, this is the only process where someone else can actually add to or take away things from your essay . This is because what they are adding or taking away tends to be one or two misplaced letters.

Laser focus. Proofreading is all about the tiny details, so the ability to really concentrate on finding small slip-ups is a must.

Excellent grammar and spelling skills. Proofreaders need to dot every "i" and cross every "t." Good proofreaders should correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. They should put foreign words in italics and surround quotations with quotation marks. They should check that you used the correct college's name, and that you adhered to any formatting requirements (name and date at the top of the page, uniform font and size, uniform spacing).

Limited interference. A proofreader needs to make sure that you followed any word limits. But if cuts need to be made to shorten the essay, that's your job and not the proofreader's.

A bad proofreader either tries to turn into an editor, or just lacks the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job.

Some signs that you're working with a bad proofreader are:

• If they suggest making major changes to the final draft of your essay. Proofreading happens when editing is already finished.
• If they aren't particularly good at spelling, or don't know grammar, or aren't detail-oriented enough to find someone else's small mistakes.
• If they start swapping out your words for fancier-sounding synonyms, or changing the voice and sound of your essay in other ways. A proofreader is there to check for errors, not to take the 17-year-old out of your writing.

What Do Colleges Think of Your Getting Help With Your Essay?

Admissions officers agree: light editing and proofreading are good—even required ! But they also want to make sure you're the one doing the work on your essay. They want essays with stories, voice, and themes that come from you. They want to see work that reflects your actual writing ability, and that focuses on what you find important.

On the Importance of Editing

Get feedback. Have a fresh pair of eyes give you some feedback. Don't allow someone else to rewrite your essay, but do take advantage of others' edits and opinions when they seem helpful. ( Bates College )

Read your essay aloud to someone. Reading the essay out loud offers a chance to hear how your essay sounds outside your head. This exercise reveals flaws in the essay's flow, highlights grammatical errors and helps you ensure that you are communicating the exact message you intended. ( Dickinson College )

On the Value of Proofreading

Share your essays with at least one or two people who know you well—such as a parent, teacher, counselor, or friend—and ask for feedback. Remember that you ultimately have control over your essays, and your essays should retain your own voice, but others may be able to catch mistakes that you missed and help suggest areas to cut if you are over the word limit. ( Yale University )

Proofread and then ask someone else to proofread for you. Although we want substance, we also want to be able to see that you can write a paper for our professors and avoid careless mistakes that would drive them crazy. ( Oberlin College )

On Watching Out for Too Much Outside Influence

Limit the number of people who review your essay. Too much input usually means your voice is lost in the writing style. ( Carleton College )

Ask for input (but not too much). Your parents, friends, guidance counselors, coaches, and teachers are great people to bounce ideas off of for your essay. They know how unique and spectacular you are, and they can help you decide how to articulate it. Keep in mind, however, that a 45-year-old lawyer writes quite differently from an 18-year-old student, so if your dad ends up writing the bulk of your essay, we're probably going to notice. ( Vanderbilt University )

Now let's talk about some potential people to approach for your college essay editing and proofreading needs. It's best to start close to home and slowly expand outward. Not only are your family and friends more invested in your success than strangers, but they also have a better handle on your interests and personality. This knowledge is key for judging whether your essay is expressing your true self.

Parents or Close Relatives

Your family may be full of potentially excellent editors! Parents are deeply committed to your well-being, and family members know you and your life well enough to offer details or incidents that can be included in your essay. On the other hand, the rewriting process necessarily involves criticism, which is sometimes hard to hear from someone very close to you.

A parent or close family member is a great choice for an editor if you can answer "yes" to the following questions. Is your parent or close relative a good writer or reader? Do you have a relationship where editing your essay won't create conflict? Are you able to constructively listen to criticism and suggestion from the parent?

One suggestion for defusing face-to-face discussions is to try working on the essay over email. Send your parent a draft, have them write you back some comments, and then you can pick which of their suggestions you want to use and which to discard.

Teachers or Tutors

A humanities teacher that you have a good relationship with is a great choice. I am purposefully saying humanities, and not just English, because teachers of Philosophy, History, Anthropology, and any other classes where you do a lot of writing, are all used to reviewing student work.

Moreover, any teacher or tutor that has been working with you for some time, knows you very well and can vet the essay to make sure it "sounds like you."

If your teacher or tutor has some experience with what college essays are supposed to be like, ask them to be your editor. If not, then ask whether they have time to proofread your final draft.

Guidance or College Counselor at Your School

The best thing about asking your counselor to edit your work is that this is their job. This means that they have a very good sense of what colleges are looking for in an application essay.

At the same time, school counselors tend to have relationships with admissions officers in many colleges, which again gives them insight into what works and which college is focused on what aspect of the application.

Unfortunately, in many schools the guidance counselor tends to be way overextended. If your ratio is 300 students to 1 college counselor, you're unlikely to get that person's undivided attention and focus. It is still useful to ask them for general advice about your potential topics, but don't expect them to be able to stay with your essay from first draft to final version.

Friends, Siblings, or Classmates

Although they most likely don't have much experience with what colleges are hoping to see, your peers are excellent sources for checking that your essay is you .

Friends and siblings are perfect for the read-aloud edit. Read your essay to them so they can listen for words and phrases that are stilted, pompous, or phrases that just don't sound like you.

You can even trade essays and give helpful advice on each other's work.

If your editor hasn't worked with college admissions essays very much, no worries! Any astute and attentive reader can still greatly help with your process. But, as in all things, beginners do better with some preparation.

First, your editor should read our advice about how to write a college essay introduction , how to spot and fix a bad college essay , and get a sense of what other students have written by going through some admissions essays that worked .

Then, as they read your essay, they can work through the following series of questions that will help them to guide you.

Introduction Questions

• Is the first sentence a killer opening line? Why or why not?
• Does the introduction hook the reader? Does it have a colorful, detailed, and interesting narrative? Or does it propose a compelling or surprising idea?
• Can you feel the author's voice in the introduction, or is the tone dry, dull, or overly formal? Show the places where the voice comes through.

Essay Body Questions

• Does the essay have a through-line? Is it built around a central argument, thought, idea, or focus? Can you put this idea into your own words?
• How is the essay organized? By logical progression? Chronologically? Do you feel order when you read it, or are there moments where you are confused or lose the thread of the essay?
• Does the essay have both narratives about the author's life and explanations and insight into what these stories reveal about the author's character, personality, goals, or dreams? If not, which is missing?
• Does the essay flow? Are there smooth transitions/clever links between paragraphs? Between the narrative and moments of insight?

Reader Response Questions

• Does the writer's personality come through? Do we know what the speaker cares about? Do we get a sense of "who he or she is"?
• Where did you feel most connected to the essay? Which parts of the essay gave you a "you are there" sensation by invoking your senses? What moments could you picture in your head well?
• Where are the details and examples vague and not specific enough?
• Did you get an "a-ha!" feeling anywhere in the essay? Is there a moment of insight that connected all the dots for you? Is there a good reveal or "twist" anywhere in the essay?
• What are the strengths of this essay? What needs the most improvement?

Should You Pay Money for Essay Editing?

One alternative to asking someone you know to help you with your college essay is the paid editor route. There are two different ways to pay for essay help: a private essay coach or a less personal editing service , like the many proliferating on the internet.

My advice is to think of these options as a last resort rather than your go-to first choice. I'll first go through the reasons why. Then, if you do decide to go with a paid editor, I'll help you decide between a coach and a service.

When to Consider a Paid Editor

In general, I think hiring someone to work on your essay makes a lot of sense if none of the people I discussed above are a possibility for you.

If you can't ask your parents. For example, if your parents aren't good writers, or if English isn't their first language. Or if you think getting your parents to help is going create unnecessary extra conflict in your relationship with them (applying to college is stressful as it is!)

If you can't ask your teacher or tutor. Maybe you don't have a trusted teacher or tutor that has time to look over your essay with focus. Or, for instance, your favorite humanities teacher has very limited experience with college essays and so won't know what admissions officers want to see.

If you can't ask your guidance counselor. This could be because your guidance counselor is way overwhelmed with other students.

If you can't share your essay with those who know you. It might be that your essay is on a very personal topic that you're unwilling to share with parents, teachers, or peers. Just make sure it doesn't fall into one of the bad-idea topics in our article on bad college essays .

If the cost isn't a consideration. Many of these services are quite expensive, and private coaches even more so. If you have finite resources, I'd say that hiring an SAT or ACT tutor (whether it's PrepScholar or someone else) is better way to spend your money . This is because there's no guarantee that a slightly better essay will sufficiently elevate the rest of your application, but a significantly higher SAT score will definitely raise your applicant profile much more.

Should You Hire an Essay Coach?

On the plus side, essay coaches have read dozens or even hundreds of college essays, so they have experience with the format. Also, because you'll be working closely with a specific person, it's more personal than sending your essay to a service, which will know even less about you.

But, on the minus side, you'll still be bouncing ideas off of someone who doesn't know that much about you . In general, if you can adequately get the help from someone you know, there is no advantage to paying someone to help you.

If you do decide to hire a coach, ask your school counselor, or older students that have used the service for recommendations. If you can't afford the coach's fees, ask whether they can work on a sliding scale —many do. And finally, beware those who guarantee admission to your school of choice—essay coaches don't have any special magic that can back up those promises.

Should You Send Your Essay to a Service?

On the plus side, essay editing services provide a similar product to essay coaches, and they cost significantly less . If you have some assurance that you'll be working with a good editor, the lack of face-to-face interaction won't prevent great results.

On the minus side, however, it can be difficult to gauge the quality of the service before working with them . If they are churning through many application essays without getting to know the students they are helping, you could end up with an over-edited essay that sounds just like everyone else's. In the worst case scenario, an unscrupulous service could send you back a plagiarized essay.

Getting recommendations from friends or a school counselor for reputable services is key to avoiding heavy-handed editing that writes essays for you or does too much to change your essay. Including a badly-edited essay like this in your application could cause problems if there are inconsistencies. For example, in interviews it might be clear you didn't write the essay, or the skill of the essay might not be reflected in your schoolwork and test scores.

Should You Buy an Essay Written by Someone Else?

Let me elaborate. There are super sketchy places on the internet where you can simply buy a pre-written essay. Don't do this!

For one thing, you'll be lying on an official, signed document. All college applications make you sign a statement saying something like this:

I certify that all information submitted in the admission process—including the application, the personal essay, any supplements, and any other supporting materials—is my own work, factually true, and honestly presented... I understand that I may be subject to a range of possible disciplinary actions, including admission revocation, expulsion, or revocation of course credit, grades, and degree, should the information I have certified be false. (From the Common Application )

For another thing, if your academic record doesn't match the essay's quality, the admissions officer will start thinking your whole application is riddled with lies.

Admission officers have full access to your writing portion of the SAT or ACT so that they can compare work that was done in proctored conditions with that done at home. They can tell if these were written by different people. Not only that, but there are now a number of search engines that faculty and admission officers can use to see if an essay contains strings of words that have appeared in other essays—you have no guarantee that the essay you bought wasn't also bought by 50 other students.

• You should get college essay help with both editing and proofreading
• A good editor will ask questions about your idea, logic, and structure, and will point out places where clarity is needed
• A good editor will absolutely not answer these questions, give you their own ideas, or write the essay or parts of the essay for you
• A good proofreader will find typos and check your formatting
• All of them agree that getting light editing and proofreading is necessary
• Parents, teachers, guidance or college counselor, and peers or siblings
• If you can't ask any of those, you can pay for college essay help, but watch out for services or coaches who over-edit you work
• Don't buy a pre-written essay! Colleges can tell, and it'll make your whole application sound false.

Ready to start working on your essay? Check out our explanation of the point of the personal essay and the role it plays on your applications and then explore our step-by-step guide to writing a great college essay .

Using the Common Application for your college applications? We have an excellent guide to the Common App essay prompts and useful advice on how to pick the Common App prompt that's right for you . Wondering how other people tackled these prompts? Then work through our roundup of over 130 real college essay examples published by colleges .

Stressed about whether to take the SAT again before submitting your application? Let us help you decide how many times to take this test . If you choose to go for it, we have the ultimate guide to studying for the SAT to give you the ins and outs of the best ways to study.

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

Student and Parent Forum

Our new student and parent forum, at ExpertHub.PrepScholar.com , allow you to interact with your peers and the PrepScholar staff. See how other students and parents are navigating high school, college, and the college admissions process. Ask questions; get answers.

Ask a Question Below

Have any questions about this article or other topics? Ask below and we'll reply!

Improve With Our Famous Guides

• For All Students

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 160+ SAT Points

How to Get a Perfect 1600, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 800 on Each SAT Section:

Score 800 on SAT Math

Score 800 on SAT Reading

Score 800 on SAT Writing

Series: How to Get to 600 on Each SAT Section:

Score 600 on SAT Math

Score 600 on SAT Reading

Score 600 on SAT Writing

Free Complete Official SAT Practice Tests

What SAT Target Score Should You Be Aiming For?

15 Strategies to Improve Your SAT Essay

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 4+ ACT Points

How to Get a Perfect 36 ACT, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 36 on Each ACT Section:

36 on ACT English

36 on ACT Math

36 on ACT Reading

36 on ACT Science

Series: How to Get to 24 on Each ACT Section:

24 on ACT English

24 on ACT Math

24 on ACT Reading

24 on ACT Science

What ACT target score should you be aiming for?

ACT Vocabulary You Must Know

ACT Writing: 15 Tips to Raise Your Essay Score

How to Get Into Harvard and the Ivy League

How to Get a Perfect 4.0 GPA

How to Write an Amazing College Essay

What Exactly Are Colleges Looking For?

Is the ACT easier than the SAT? A Comprehensive Guide

Should you retake your SAT or ACT?

When should you take the SAT or ACT?

Stay Informed

Get the latest articles and test prep tips!

Looking for Graduate School Test Prep?

Check out our top-rated graduate blogs here:

GRE Online Prep Blog

GMAT Online Prep Blog

TOEFL Online Prep Blog

Holly R. "I am absolutely overjoyed and cannot thank you enough for helping me!”

• Submit A Post
• EdTech Trainers and Consultants
• Your Campus EdTech
• Your EdTech Product
• Your Feedback
• Your Love for Us
• EdTech Product Reviews

ETR Resources

• Mission/Vision
• Testimonials
• Our Clients
• Press Release

5 Ways Teachers Can Help Students in Their Online Learning Journey

The pandemic has had a large impact on education. Firstly, it forced us to adopt online learning, and secondly, it changed the way most boards conduct examinations.

Now that schools are reopening and physical classes are getting back on track, digital content and tools could still be used as part of after-school learning. A key advantage of online teaching is that it provides an interactive experience where students become active participants in the learning process.

With the growing prominence of online education and its integration into the daily lives of students, teachers can play an active role in helping students in their online learning journey. Here’s how:

1. introduce students to interesting learning resources.

The internet is a rich source of engaging and interactive content, but only if you know the right resources. Teachers can point students to credible and popular learning resources like TED-Ed, Khan Academy, and TED Talks. They can also guide students in using the learning videos on SuperTeacher by sharing video links that are helpful. Students will also enjoy learning through interactive simulation websites like PhET, and virtual labs like those developed by the Ministry of Education, Government of India. Teachers can guide students in using these resources to gain knowledge and apply their learnings.

2. Give Pedagogy a ‘Social’ Twist

Students love social media, and there is no denying it. Why not use social media to improve learning outcomes? Teachers can use social media to increase collaboration among students for assignments and tests. They can gather student feedback through polls, and share interesting tests, assign ‘group’ work, discuss lessons, play games and much more!

3. Experiment with New Teaching Methodologies

The flipped classroom, gamified learning, expeditionary learning, blended learning, … the list of innovative teaching methodologies is extensive. Some of these methodologies are teacher-centred, while others are student-centred. For instance, flipped classroom methodology is teacher-centred while gamification is student-centred. Blended learning incorporates the best features of several teaching methodologies. Teachers can learn more about innovative teaching methodologies most suited to an online environment and incorporate them in their instruction. For example, to incorporate gamification methodology in online learning, you can assign points for individual actions such as answering questions, asking doubts, interacting with teachers, completing tasks, maintaining discipline and so on. Students with the highest points win rewards. 

4. Promote Peer Collaboration

Students learn best when they interact with their peers and receive feedback from them. Peer-to-peer interaction happens easily in a traditional classroom environment. But when it comes to online learning, there is often very little or no peer-to-peer interaction. Teachers can promote online interaction among students by assigning virtual group activities and allotting time for online classroom discussions. They can also encourage students to give each other feedback on assignments through message boards or video clips. Such practices will encourage peer learning in an online environment and build a culture of collaboration among students.

5. Educate about Internet Safety

While the internet is a treasure chest of knowledge, its hazards cannot be ignored. When children are encouraged to interact and learn online, they should at the same time be educated about its risks. Teachers can make it a point to discuss the hazards of the internet, things students should be wary of, the appropriate way to conduct oneself on platforms like forums and video calls, how to identify and report cyberbullying, etc.

The internet has transformed the way we learn. While millennials responded to roll calls (remember “present teacher”?), Gen Z is getting used to automated attendance tracking! Millennials were easily excited by something as simple as a PowerPoint slide show on a projector. Gen Z has virtual labs and simulators for hands-on learning. As technology and online teaching apps get increasingly interesting by the day, teachers will have to stay one step ahead. Online learning is the way forward, and yes, it’s here to stay! Are you prepared?

Latest EdTech News To Your Inbox

Stay connected.

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address

Remember Me

• Forms for Educators
• Apply for a discount
• Sign Up for Free

• Educational Technology

How to reach shy students by engaging them online

While having quiet students in class may seem appealing, they can actually be more stressful for teachers than the more outgoing students. Classroom discussion is important, yet teachers often have a hard time getting these students to break out of their shells and participate.

Old-school tactics for reaching quiet students — group projects, calling on them in class, graded discussion — don’t usually encourage willing participation, either. These are all strategies for forced engagement that rarely help students overcome shyness and open up in class.  

TrustED managing editor Todd Kominiak says this is why teachers need to find different ways to give all students a voice and a way to express their views in class. Many have turned to digital resources in the classroom as the solution to helping shy students engage.

As educator Jerry Blumengarten notes, “Technology gives the quietest student a voice.”

For an insightful look into the future of higher education, explore “ 8 Top Trends in Higher Education to Watch in 2024 ” on Jotform’s blog.

Digital Tools Allow Quiet Students to Participate Through Writing

Although shy students don’t like to be called on, they can participate in written discussions. Tools that facilitate those discussions include

• Blogs. Blogging helps students articulate their views, notes Karen Evans , owner of Start Blogging Online. Create a classroom blog, suggests Evans, where each student can share under their own profile and comment on your posts for active discussion. Or students can create their own blogs where they present their ideas for you to comment on.
• Online chat rooms and forums. Hosting discussions online is a great way to encourage shy students to participate during class. These online discussions can facilitate discourse during class lectures and offer a way for shy students to engage with other students during class without feeling like they are in the spotlight. Some tools to consider using are Google Classroom , Top Hat Classroom , and Now Comment .
• Social media. Engaging students via social media is a great idea because most of your students are already there and feel confident on those platforms. You can lead Twitter or Facebook discussions that eliminate the embarrassment shy students feel about speaking up.
• Live documents. Former high school English teacher Christina Lovdal Gil used Google Docs in her classes to engage with her quiet students. Docs allowed her to provide immediate feedback, which opened a dialogue with shy students in class. Google Docs also offered a way for these students to participate in group activities.
• Videos and podcasts. Maybe your shy students like to talk, but not in front of a crowd. Encouraging them to create videos or podcasts can make them more comfortable vocalizing their thoughts in a way that still eliminates the pressure of speaking up in front of the class.

Participating in online discussions helps quiet students gain the confidence to share their ideas and opinions without worrying about what others think. Repeated online interactions should make them comfortable enough with their surroundings in class to start participating more, says Matthew Lynch , dean of the School of Education, Psychology and Interdisciplinary Studies at Virginia Union University.  

Aside from giving them a voice, online discussions also provide shy students with time to think before participating.

Online Discussion Gives Shy Students Time to Reflect

Shy students don’t speak up in class for fear of judgement, ridicule, and appearing unintelligent. Their hesitancy may make it seem like they don’t understand what’s going on, but it’s possible they just need more time to process information and gather their thoughts.

Immediately responding to questions or participating in active discussions in class is especially intimidating if those students aren’t sure of their answers. The option to participate online allows them to take some extra time to be certain of their ideas before responding.

Consider providing students with an extended deadline to answer questions. For real-time discussions, the team at educational technology company Pear Deck suggests a one-minute wait time that allows students ample time to think about and respond to a question.

To further engage these students, ask questions via online tools that allow them to respond digitally. This takes away the pressure of an immediate, public response but still gives you a chance to judge a student’s comprehension of materials during a lesson.

Technology Can Help You Gauge Student Understanding

Teaching quiet students can be frustrating because it is often difficult to tell why they aren’t speaking up. Educator and curriculum designer Amy Leask notes that a student may be reluctant to participate in class because they are having trouble mastering the subject, or they could be excelling with the material and merely be shy.

But when they don’t ask questions or engage in discussions, how do you know for sure?

By engaging students online, you are better able to make that distinction. When you engage with them through live documents or online communication tools, you can better assess their understanding. Once you know their level of mastery, you can use different digital tools to help them overcome their aversion to speaking up in class.

Digital tools offer quiet students the opportunity to learn to trust their teachers and form a relationship with the class without having to verbalize their thoughts. It’s that verbalization that they find paralyzing. By engaging them online, you offer a different path for communication, one that will hopefully build their confidence and comfort level enough so that they start speaking up during class discussions.

Thank you for helping improve the Jotform Blog. 🎉

RECOMMENDED ARTICLES

What is Educational Technology?

The pros and cons of academic tracking

How to hold virtual parent-teacher meetings on Zoom

20 questions to ask alumni

Gimkit vs Kahoot!: Choosing the right educational platform

Create digital reading logs for students with Jotform

10 best student assessment apps for teachers

Tracking success: 4 easy ways to assess student learning

Student survey questions: A guide for teachers

How digital tools can help teachers collaborate on lesson plans

Top 7 Quizlet alternatives in 2024

Google Classroom vs Canvas: Features, pricing, and more

Top online gradebooks for teachers and schools

How schools should approach long-term data management

Top free software for students

EdTech in 2025: A glimpse into education’s future

Top 8 online quiz makers for teachers

Quizizz vs Quizlet: A close-up look at 2 top quiz tools

Canvas vs Moodle: Comparing digital classrooms 

11 ways to use Jotform for distance learning

4 educational technology tools transforming the classroom

4 tips to help you adjust to unexpected lesson plan deviations

Using tech to keep students with food allergies safe

How to manage a successful school fundraiser

LearnWorlds pricing plans: Which one is right for you?

Top 5 classroom polling tools to engage students

Professional development for teachers: Importance of feedback for teachers

Online learning vs traditional learning

How to create online progress reports for students

Benefits and challenges of mobile learning

7 presentation tools for teachers

How to share your student data with colleagues

How students and educators use Jotform surveys for research

How to become a paperless school

Free online tools for teachers, recommended by teachers

The benefits of admissions and enrollment management software  

How a Growing Language School Enrolls New Students

Quizizz vs Kahoot!: Choosing the right quiz platform

8 tips for using Zoom for online learning

10 Schoology alternatives in 2024

4 sanity-saving ways for teachers to update parents

How to minimize the disruption of school campus tours

7 higher education apps to be more efficient in 2020

How to create online courses

What is microlearning?

10 best school management software tools

Comparing K–12 online education platforms: Schoology vs Google Classroom

How to Use Jotform for Education (Movie)

How to improve feedback in the classroom

Educational Uses of Jotform

Online Forms: A Teacher’s Best Friend

School web design: 3 tips to engage students and parents

How to conduct remote student assessments

5 benefits of online learning

How to add a Google form to Schoology

How to Make a Standout Online Scholarship Application Form

Homework in digital classrooms

How to create a successful virtual learning experience

3 important questions about education data collection

How to engage your alumni to support your school

5 tips for creating a virtual learning environment

How to offer virtual office hours to your students

How to manage evaluations in education

The 7 best student management systems

How school counselors use data to help students succeed

13 tech tools for teachers on a tight budget: The path to paperless

Top teacher survey questions you need to ask

Data privacy 101: How to safely use cloud tools this school year

Top 5 online assessment tools for teachers

7 tips to improve the e-learning experience

Formative and summative assessments: How the right technology enhances learning

How to optimize an IEP meeting: 5 best practices

10 tips for healthy parent-teacher communication

10 educators you should follow on Twitter

Top scholarship management software

How a Teacher Uses Jotform to Help Her Students

How to become a better online teacher

How to host a virtual open house for your school

Back-to-School Tips for Teachers: Collecting Student Data

Gamifying your curriculum with Blooket vs Gimkit

How to create a remote learning plan

The best 26 teacher apps in 2024

Remind vs GroupMe: Which student communication tool to use

Methods to utilize technology for school administrators

Top 5 Kahoot! alternatives in 2024

6 Jotform Features to Use for Back-to-School

Can we talk? Better communication reduces teacher turnover

Use These Apps to Improve Your School’s Efficiency

Automated schools: 7 school processes you can automate

The anatomy of a data-rich teacher evaluation form

How to track student progress

Blooket vs Kahoot!: Comparing interactive learning platforms

Top 8 fundraising platforms for schools

Sending Your Graduation Party Invitations with Jotform

How to design accessible online courses

What is a learning management system?

How private schools can recruit top students

An overview of Google Classroom’s pricing plans for K–12

The best software for teachers

10 best K–12 student information systems

Send Comment :

2 Comments:

More than a year ago

Extremely interesting. Thank you for giving such an informative blog.

This article looks very useful. Thank you for sharing

Essay Papers Writing Online

Websites to write essays easily and effortlessly with these top platforms.

Are you a student struggling with your essay assignments? Look no further! In today’s fast-paced world, finding reliable and efficient websites for essay writing can be a daunting task. With so many options available, it’s crucial to find the platform that suits your specific needs and guarantees top-notch quality. This guide will help you navigate through the vast sea of online essay writing services and provide you with a list of exceptional websites that will save you time, effort, and deliver outstanding results.

When it comes to writing essays, it’s imperative to find platforms that offer a seamless user experience, have a wide range of subject expertise, and boast professional writers with in-depth knowledge. Additionally, accessibility and affordability play a significant role in your decision-making process. You want a website that is available 24/7, easy to navigate, and offers competitive prices. These factors, combined with a commitment to originality, confidentiality, and prompt delivery, are the key components of a reliable essay writing website.

Whether you are a high school student working on your first essay or a graduate student seeking assistance with complex research papers, finding the right website can make a world of difference in your academic success. With the help of this guide, you will discover the top-notch essay writing platforms that have gained a stellar reputation for their exceptional services. Say goodbye to hours spent on endless research and stress – get ready to find the website that will turn your essay writing experience into a breeze!

Best Websites to Write Essays

When it comes to online platforms for academic writing, there are several outstanding options available. These platforms provide a space where individuals can showcase their writing skills and earn money by offering their services to students and professionals in need of essays or other written content. Whether you are a seasoned writer looking for new opportunities or a student in search of assistance with your assignments, these websites offer a wide range of features and benefits to meet your needs.

1. WritingHub

One of the top websites for essay writing is WritingHub. This platform offers a user-friendly interface and a large pool of talented writers specializing in various disciplines. With WritingHub, you can submit your essay requirements and receive bids from qualified writers. You can then choose the writer who best fits your needs based on their experience, ratings, and price. The platform also provides a messaging system for direct communication with your chosen writer, ensuring a personalized and efficient writing process.

2. AcademicPro

If you are seeking a platform that guarantees high-quality essays, AcademicPro is a great choice. This website prides itself on having a rigorous screening process to ensure that only the most skilled and experienced writers are accepted. AcademicPro also offers a money-back guarantee, so you can be confident that you will receive a well-written essay that meets your requirements. Additionally, the platform provides 24/7 customer support to address any concerns or questions you may have throughout the writing process.

3. EssayExperts

For those searching for a website that offers a wide range of writing services beyond essays, EssayExperts is an excellent option. In addition to essays, this platform offers assistance with research papers, dissertations, thesis statements, and more. EssayExperts boasts a team of highly qualified writers who have expertise in various academic fields. The platform also offers free revisions to ensure that you are completely satisfied with the final product.

4. ProEssayWriter

ProEssayWriter is a website that stands out for its efficiency and affordability. This platform offers a quick turnaround time without compromising the quality of the writing. ProEssayWriter also provides competitive prices, making it an attractive option for those on a budget. Additionally, the platform has a customer rating system, allowing you to see the feedback and ratings of previous clients to help you make an informed decision when choosing a writer.

5. EssayMasters

If you are looking for a website that guarantees original and plagiarism-free essays, EssayMasters is a top choice. This platform emphasizes the importance of authenticity and ensures that all essays are written from scratch. EssayMasters also offers a team of highly skilled writers who are experienced in various citation styles and can meet even the strictest formatting requirements. With their dedication to quality and originality, EssayMasters aims to exceed your expectations with every essay they deliver.

In conclusion, these websites provide a platform for individuals to showcase their writing skills and offer their services to those who need assistance with essays or other written content. With their user-friendly interfaces, talented writers, and array of features, these websites are the go-to options for anyone in search of high-quality essays and academic writing services. Whether you are a writer looking for new opportunities or a student seeking help with your assignments, these platforms offer the necessary tools and support to ensure your success.

In the world of online essay writing services, EssayPro stands out as a reliable and efficient platform for students and professionals alike. With its user-friendly interface and a wide range of features, EssayPro provides a seamless experience for those seeking high-quality essays on various topics.

One of the key advantages of EssayPro is its team of experienced writers who are well-versed in different academic disciplines. They can tackle any subject and deliver well-researched and original essays that meet the highest standards of quality. Additionally, EssayPro allows users to choose their preferred writer based on their ratings, reviews, and area of expertise, ensuring that each assignment is in capable hands.

Another noteworthy feature of EssayPro is its efficient customer support system. The platform provides 24/7 assistance to address any inquiries or concerns that users may have. The support team is highly responsive and knowledgeable, ensuring a smooth communication process between the writers and the clients.

Furthermore, EssayPro values confidentiality and privacy, ensuring that all personal and payment information is protected. The platform uses secure encryption protocols to safeguard user data, giving users peace of mind when accessing the service.

• Quality essays written by experienced professionals
• Ability to choose preferred writer based on ratings and expertise
• 24/7 customer support for immediate assistance
• Strict confidentiality and privacy measures
• User-friendly interface for a seamless experience

Overall, EssayPro is a top-notch platform that offers a reliable and efficient solution for those in need of essay writing services. With its experienced writers, user-friendly interface, and excellent customer support, EssayPro is a go-to choice for students and professionals who value high-quality work.

PapersOwl is a well-established online platform that offers a range of services for academic writing. It provides a convenient and reliable solution for students looking to get their essays written professionally.

One of the key advantages of PapersOwl is the quality of the papers they deliver. Their team of experienced writers ensures that each essay is well-researched, properly structured, and written to a high standard. Students can expect to receive well-written and well-argued essays that demonstrate a thorough understanding of the topic.

Another advantage of PapersOwl is the professionalism and reliability of their writers. They have a rigorous selection process, which ensures that only the best writers are hired. This means that students can be confident that their essays will be handled by experts in their field. Additionally, PapersOwl provides a messaging system that allows students to communicate directly with the assigned writer, ensuring that any questions or concerns can be addressed promptly.

Timely delivery is also a key feature of PapersOwl. They understand the importance of meeting deadlines, and their writers are committed to delivering essays on time. This is particularly useful for students who may have tight deadlines and need their essays urgently.

However, there are a few drawbacks to using PapersOwl. One of these is the cost. The high quality and professionalism of their writers come at a price, and PapersOwl can be quite expensive compared to other platforms. Additionally, PapersOwl may not be suitable for urgent orders, as they prioritize quality over speed.

In conclusion, PapersOwl is a reputable platform for essay writing that offers high-quality papers, experienced writers, and timely delivery. While it may be more expensive than other options, it provides a reliable solution for students who value quality and professionalism in their academic writing.

EduBirdie is an online platform that provides essay writing services to students. It is a popular option for those who are looking for professional assistance and guidance in their academic writing tasks. With a team of experienced writers, EduBirdie offers a wide range of essay writing services to cater to the diverse needs of students. Whether you need help with research papers, term papers, or any other type of academic writing, EduBirdie has got you covered.

One of the key features of EduBirdie is its easy-to-use interface, which allows students to place their orders quickly and conveniently. The platform also offers a user-friendly messaging system, which enables students to communicate directly with their assigned writers. This ensures clear and effective communication, resulting in high-quality essays that meet the specific requirements and expectations of each student.

EduBirdie takes pride in its team of writers, who are highly qualified and knowledgeable in various academic disciplines. They have a deep understanding of different writing styles and formats, ensuring that each essay is well-written and properly structured. The writers at EduBirdie also conduct thorough research to gather relevant and up-to-date information, providing students with well-researched and informative essays.

Another important aspect of EduBirdie is its commitment to delivering plagiarism-free content. The platform has strict policies in place to ensure that all essays are original and written from scratch. This ensures that students receive unique and authentic essays that are free from any form of plagiarism. EduBirdie also provides plagiarism reports upon request, giving students peace of mind and confidence in the originality of their essays.

Overall, EduBirdie is a reliable and trustworthy platform for essay writing services. With its user-friendly interface, experienced writers, and commitment to plagiarism-free content, it is a top choice for students seeking professional writing assistance. Whether you need help with a single essay or multiple assignments, EduBirdie is here to help you achieve academic success.

EssayShark is a popular platform that offers students a convenient and reliable solution for their essay writing needs. With its user-friendly interface, vast pool of talented writers, and efficient system, EssayShark has earned a reputation as a go-to website for students seeking assistance with their academic writing tasks.

When it comes to finding the best essay writing service, EssayShark stands out for its commitment to quality and professionalism. The platform carefully selects its writers, ensuring they have the necessary expertise and qualifications to deliver top-notch essays. Whether you need help with an essay on literature, history, science, or any other subject, EssayShark has writers who can handle it all.

One of the key features that sets EssayShark apart is its bidding system. Rather than assigning writers to projects, the platform allows students to post their essay requirements and receive bids from available writers. This gives students the opportunity to choose the writer that best fits their needs and budget. It also promotes competition among writers, driving them to deliver their best work.

EssayShark offers a transparent and secure payment system, ensuring that students only release payment once they are satisfied with the completed essay. The platform also provides a messaging system that allows direct communication between students and writers, enabling them to collaborate effectively throughout the writing process.

With its reputation for delivering high-quality essays, personalized service, and reliable support, EssayShark has become a trusted platform for students around the world. Whether you need help with a simple essay or a complex research paper, EssayShark is a platform you can rely on to meet your essay writing needs.

GradeMiners

When it comes to finding a reliable platform for academic writing services, GradeMiners is a highly recommended option to consider. With a strong reputation in the industry, GradeMiners offers a wide range of writing services to meet the needs of students at various academic levels.

GradeMiners understands the importance of delivering high-quality essays that meet the academic standards and requirements of each client. Their team of professional writers possesses the expertise and knowledge to tackle a diverse range of topics and subjects.

One of the key benefits of using GradeMiners is their commitment to delivering plagiarism-free papers. Each essay is thoroughly checked using advanced plagiarism detection technology to ensure originality and authenticity.

Moreover, GradeMiners places a strong emphasis on meeting deadlines. Time management is crucial for students, and GradeMiners understands the importance of timely delivery. They strive to complete each order within the specified timeframe, allowing students to submit their essays without worry.

In addition to their writing services, GradeMiners also offers a range of other useful features. These include free revisions, 24/7 customer support, and a user-friendly interface that makes the ordering process simple and efficient.

Whether you need assistance with a research paper, an essay, or any other academic writing assignment, GradeMiners is a platform that can be trusted to deliver high-quality results. Their professionalism and dedication to customer satisfaction make them a top choice for students seeking reliable essay writing services.

ProEssayWriting

ProEssayWriting is a reliable online platform that offers professional essay writing services. If you are looking for assistance with your academic assignments, ProEssayWriting is here to help. With a team of experienced writers, this platform guarantees high-quality essays that meet all your requirements.

ProEssayWriting stands out from other essay writing services due to its attention to detail and commitment to customer satisfaction. Each essay is carefully crafted to ensure originality and relevance to the topic. The writers at ProEssayWriting are highly skilled in various subjects, allowing them to provide customized essays that are tailored to your needs.

When you choose ProEssayWriting, you can expect timely delivery and excellent customer support. The platform has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to place an order and track its progress. The customer support team is available 24/7 to address any concerns or questions you may have.

ProEssayWriting also prioritizes your confidentiality and privacy. Your personal information and order details are kept secure and confidential, ensuring that your identity remains protected. With ProEssayWriting, you can rest assured that your essay will be handled with professionalism and confidentiality.

Whether you need help with an essay, research paper, or any other academic assignment, ProEssayWriting is the platform to choose. Their experienced writers, attention to detail, and commitment to customer satisfaction make them a top choice for students seeking reliable essay writing services.

In the vast world of online essay writing platforms, BestEssays stands out as a top choice for students seeking high-quality papers.

BestEssays combines the best features of various online essay writing platforms to create a unique and comprehensive experience for users. With a team of talented writers and an easy-to-use website, BestEssays offers a seamless process from start to finish.

When it comes to essay writing services, BestEssays excels in providing personalized and customized solutions. Whether you need assistance with a simple essay or a complex research paper, BestEssays ensures that your requirements are met with precision and expertise.

One of the key strengths of BestEssays is its commitment to delivering plagiarism-free content. With a rigorous quality control process, every essay produced by BestEssays is thoroughly checked for originality and adherence to academic standards.

In addition to their commitment to quality, BestEssays understands the importance of meeting deadlines. With a track record of timely delivery, students can rely on BestEssays to receive their completed essays well before the submission date.

Moreover, BestEssays offers reliable customer support that is available 24/7. Whether you have a question about the progress of your essay or need assistance with the ordering process, the BestEssays support team is ready to assist you at any time.

Overall, BestEssays is a top-notch platform that combines excellent writing services, personalized solutions, plagiarism-free content, timely delivery, and reliable customer support. With BestEssays, students can trust that their academic needs will be met with professionalism and excellence.

Related Post

How to master the art of writing expository essays and captivate your audience, convenient and reliable source to purchase college essays online, step-by-step guide to crafting a powerful literary analysis essay, tips and techniques for crafting compelling narrative essays.

9 Online Platforms to Make Your Students Essay Writing Gurus

Essay writing is a process which takes a lot of time and effort, as well as skills on student’s behalf, so it doesn’t come as a shock that it’s not one of their favorite things in the world. Before they can even start writing, they need to focus on developing their ideas, which requires some serious brainstorming. Then they need to structure their essay and create an outline for it.

There is also the process of research, which deserves an entire chapter altogether, so we’re not going to get into it today, and actually writing the essay, going over it several times, editing, and looking to see if there are any grammar or spelling errors that need to be eliminated.

All of this leads to students’ procrastinating and losing a significant chunk of time which they’re going to miss later as the deadline for their essay approaches. The solution to this particular problem would be to part with all unnecessary distractions and focus on writing.

Seeing as students are very capable, and some would even say dependent, at using modern technology, it can be used to their advantage. The following list contains 9 amazing digital platforms which can help them write their essays with much less effort and improve the quality of their work.

1  Popplet

Popplet is a clever and wonderfully designed productivity app which can be applied inside a wide variety of contexts. This makes it an ideal tool during the early stages of essay writing, where students need to brainstorm and organize their initial ideas and concepts. The essence of this app are “popples”, which are boxes you can paste onto an empty board, and which can contain text, videos, images, comments, clip art, and links to one another. This type of visuals-based brainstorming is extremely effective and likely to get the students engaged.

2  EssayMap

Unlike all the other written assignments, essays are written with certain rules in mind, which also applies to the way they are structured. EssayMap is a browser-based app which can help students outline their essays and make sure all of their ideas and arguments are clearly presented. All of this takes place in a graphic environment, which is a plus, and the app doesn’t require any registration. However, users are allowed to save their essay outlines to their computers or send them via email.

3  Prompts

Writing prompts are a great method of getting students to practice their literary skills and warm up before they take on writing a challenging essay, which is why they should turn to Prompts, one of the best apps of this type online, which is able to supply its users with intelligent writing prompts on a regular basis. In addition to that, students can also use the app to track their writing efficiency, as it provides them with stats that show their average word count, days during which they were most active, and total writing time.

4  EduGeeksClub

EduGeeksClub is a writing service which can help students with every single aspect of essay writing. They can rely on it to hone their writing chops, receive direct feedback on their work from the most skilled professionals in the field, along with suggestions on how to improve, as well as advice and help from its professional editors that are capable of spotting grammar, spelling, and stylistic errors. Students can also learn from the examples, or commission an essay in order to learn how it should be written.

5  Write.app

While word-processing applications such as Microsoft Office or OpenOffice are hugely powerful, they may not be the best solution when it comes to essay writing. They contain too many distractions and tools students don’t need, which means they are better off with a more basic and minimalistic text editor. Write.app fits the description perfectly, and also features full-screen mode, which enables its users to really concentrate on writing and not much else. It includes some basic editing tools, as well as the ability to save one’s work.

6  StayFocusd

Since most of the research nowadays, as well as writing, is done on computers which have a 24/7 internet connection, it is extremely hard for students to focus on writing their essays, instead of opening up their browser and spending the next several browsing YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter. For all the Chrome users out there, there is an awesome extension called StayFocusd, which is able to limit the amount of time that is spent browsing distracting websites. After the time limit has expired, students won’t be able to access none of the sites on the list, and will have to focus on their work.

7  Writer

Another minimalistic writing app which can be used to write essays is Writer. This browser-based app offers only the bare essentials, such as the ability to change fonts and spacing, and not much else, thus ensuring minimal amount of distractions. Once a student completes the registration process, they will also be able to save their work to their devices in either plan text format or PDF, or even share it directly on one some of the most popular blogging platforms.

8  Calmly Writer

Those who may not be too fond of Writer or Write.app would perhaps like to give Calmly Writer a shot. It is yet another application designed to provide the writer with an immersive, distraction-free environment. This one takes it one step further, by blurring everything the user has written, except for the current paragraph they are working on. Offers the most basic formatting options, such as the ability to change fonts and spacing, as well as subheadings, quotes, and hyperlinks.

9  Ilys

Ilys provides its users with the most unorthodox writing environment there is. Students need to enter the word count, and once they have done that, everything else disappears from the screen of their computer but the last letter they have typed. They aren’t even allowed to make any edits, until they have matched the word count. Sounds strange, but it’s actually a good way of getting rid of all the distractions.

Every students can benefit from these 9 tools and improve the quality of their essays, as well as develop their writing skills in the process. They can finally say goodbye to procrastination, distractions, and poorly written assignments.

Antonio is a hopeless optimist who enjoys basking in the world’s brightest colors. He loves biking to distant places and occasionally he gets lost. When not doing that he’s blogging and teaching ESL. He will be happy to meet you on  Facebook  and  Twitter .

Popular posts

Tips for teachers in 2022 for online education

How to unlock engagement and have a positive environment inside your classroom

Post Covid-19 changes in Education

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Stay in touch, quick links, useful links, © copyrights 2024 itworxedu all rights reserved..

• Download Apps
• Business Ideas
• Write for Us
• Best Of TNT
• Artificial Intelligence
• Blockchain Technology
• Development
• Machine Learning

Mobile Apps

• Supply Chain Management

6 Online Platforms to Help You Edit Your Essay

Writing an essay is probably what all students hate the most. It’s a tedious, nerve-racking, and boring process. But the assignments still need to be done, right? The good thing is, we live in times when there are helpful sites and applications for almost everything. And of course, for writing and editing essays too.

If you’re asking yourself “what could I use to help me compose, edit and proofread my paper ?” then this article is for you. Because here we listed some interesting online platforms that will certainly come in handy.

Hemingway App

Hemingway App is what numerous professional writers use. This site analyzes the text and gives a breakdown of how readable it is. It notices, highlights, and suggests things that could be improved:

• The number of adverbs
• Excessive passive voice usage
• Phrases with simpler alternatives
• Hard to read sentences
• Very hard to read sentences

Also, it rates the text, with the lowest grades being awarded the easier it is to read. Also, the statistics on the whole composition are provided, stating how many words, sentences, and such are used in the text.

The goal is to give one an understanding of how readable the writing is so that you could adjust it to achieve the best result.

And of course, the ability to write, edit and receive feedback on the complexity without leaving the site is a huge advantage. Nobody likes to switch between 7 different tabs.

OneLook Thesaurus and Reverse Dictionary

There are plenty of different dictionaries and thesauruses on the web, so what makes this one special? The first and the most important point is obviously the database. The secret is, OneLook uses DataMuse API to provide you with as many results as it can.

What it does is combines some word analyzing software and linguistic resources to search for and choose different variations of word usage and its meanings all around the internet and its databases.

That’s why whenever you need to find a synonym for a certain word, OneLook will give you almost 100 variants and words that could replace it.

Also, it’s not limited to words only. One can find synonyms for a few words or even whole sentences. And of course, for the best experience, the developers also made a plugin for GoogleDocs, so that now it’s not even needed to visit the site itself.

You may have heard about this one already. Grammarly has become one of the most popular apps for writers lately. And its fame is well deserved. Grammarly automatically reads what you’re writing in real-time to give some feedback on what can be improved and what is wrong.

Unlike Hemingway App, which is aimed at improving readability, this online platform targets grammar and syntax. It checks misspelled words, typos, punctuation, wrong sentence composition, and so on. But it doesn’t simply highlight them, it also suggests a better option, while also providing short 1 or 2 sentences of explanation.

What is even better, the basic version of Grammarly is completely free. And that’s a perfect example of when “basic” really means “everything essential for writing”. You absolutely don’t need to buy the full version to receive decent feedback.

However, some more advanced suggestions like ones about unclear sentences or more precise word choices are only available through premium subscriptions.

ClicheFinder

The name speaks for itself. ClicheFinder is a very simple site that has only one goal. To find cliches and highlight them. Because if you want the essay to be unique, cliches need to be avoided as much as possible. Right, sometimes they might be useful to add some tone or realism to the writing, but in most cases, it’s not relevant to your essays.

The interface couldn’t get any more simple than this site. Just paste the text into the box and press “find cliches”.

Almost all essays have to be checked for plagiarism. Not only that, but you should be personally interested in composing a unique text. Any similarities to other essays or well-known resources won’t be accepted by most teachers. And Quetext is the perfect platform to prevent that.

Quetext runs through the writing, compares it to hundreds of thousands of articles, essays, and basically any texts available on the internet.

It pretty much stands out from all the similar resources, because its search engine can go much deeper than its rivals.

But, as you could guess, it’s not limited to just that. This plagiarism detector finds all the sources with similarities in writing and highlights them in your text. That way you’re easily able to change the sentences accordingly to keep the essay as unique as possible.

De-Jargonizer

While writing an essay about a certain topic, sometimes it’s needed to use professional jargons that are related to the subject.

For example, composing text about software engineering or any other complex processes may require professional terms. But the mistake many students do is that sometimes they use jargon excessively in addition to these professional terms.

Of course, that results in poor readability of the whole paper writers . That’s where De-Jargonizer comes to help.

Final Words

The best part of this list is that all of these platforms are free. But even more important is that any of these online platforms would be useful not only for students but for anyone willing to improve the writing skills, check themselves, or receive feedback, be it a professional writer or blogger.

• Share on Facebook
• Tweet on Twitter
• Share on Linkedin
• ClicheFinder 1
• De-Jargonizer 1
• Online Platform 2
• TNT2021 1207

Joshua Brainy

Joshua Brainy is a literary Writer. She was born in San Francisco and has lived most of her life in Los Angeles. She believes that poetry can change the world, and she uses it to inspire and empower young people.

Top 10 News

Top 10 ai tools for special education teachers in 2024.

Thursday April 18, 2024

[New] Top 10 Opus Clip Alternatives To Create Viral Short Cl...

Monday April 15, 2024

[New] Top 10 Soap2day Alternatives That You Can Trust (100% ...

Thursday April 11, 2024

Top 10 Humanoid Robots In The World

Thursday November 23, 2023

Top 10 Internet Providers In The World | List Of Fastest ISP...

Monday November 20, 2023

10 Best AI Image Enhancer & Upscaler Tools (100% Workin...

Monday October 2, 2023

10 Best AI Text To Speech Generator (October 2024)

Wednesday September 20, 2023

10 Best AI Video Generators In 2024 (Free & Paid)

10 best ai voice generators in 2024 (free & paid).

Friday September 15, 2023

10 Best Free QR Code Generators in 2023

Monday July 24, 2023

Follow us on

• Entertainment
• Uncategorized

Enjoyed the Read?

Don't miss our next article!

Related Posts

What Is Spotify Premium Duo? Explained (Pros & Cons)

By: bharat kumar, tue april 2, 2024.

Spotify duo comes with an array of entertainment doses! Here’s everything you..

Instagram Notes: What Are They & How To Use Them

By: alan jackson, sun march 3, 2024.

In the dynamic realm of social media, platforms are constantly rolling out..

5 Best Tiktok To MP4 Download (100% Working), No Signup

By: alan jackson, mon january 29, 2024.

Updated On 06 March, 2024  Searching for tiktok to mp4 converters? Look at..

How To TikTok Recharge & Buy Coins To Send Gifts? (2024...

By: amelia scott, thu january 11, 2024.

Updated On 06 March, 2024  Tiktok coins used to tip your favorite content..

7 Best Instagram Font Generators (Apps & Websites)

By: amelia scott, wed january 3, 2024.

Updated On 06 March, 2024  Did you just get excited seeing those cool..

The Ultimate Guide To Mobile App Analytics Tools

By: micah james, sat december 23, 2023.

Mobile applications now play a necessary role in our everyday routines, and the..

• Cookies Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Condition