Tutoring might soon become another face-to-face interaction replaced by online technology in efforts to enhance student learning and partially offset years of budget cuts for the UNC system.

WebAssign — an online homework grading system used by high schools and universities nationwide — is developing an online tutoring service, which could potentially reduce the need for tutors and teaching assistants.

The new tool will provide instant remedial help 24 hours a day to students as they work on assignments.

Mark Santee, director of marketing for WebAssign, said the online tutoring service could help shrink TA workloads and decrease tutoring fees for UNC-system schools that have absorbed millions in cuts during the last four years.

The service will encourage more self-learning among students, he said.

“We want to help students measure on their own not only what they’re doing, but why,” Santee said.

John Risley, a N.C. State University physics professor and CEO of WebAssign, said one of the company’s original goals was to improve students’ accessibility to tutorial resources.

“If students say they want more help, they should be able to get it easily, instead of having to make the extra effort to contact a TA,” Risley said.

Santee said the company hopes to complete more testing this fall before launching the service.

Since its creation in 1997, WebAssign has existed as an online homework assessment system that randomizes questions and instantly grades students’ performances.

Duane Deardorff, director of undergraduate laboratories in the UNC physics and astronomy department, said this immediate feedback is WebAssign’s most valuable tool.

“(Students) have a higher vested interest in whether their answer is right or wrong,” he said.

Deardorff noted that WebAssign’s tutoring service will have to compete with MasteringPhysics, an online service used by UNC that already has a tutoring component. He said a switch to WebAssign could be discussed in the future.

Santee said the company is interested in expanding beyond its primary focus subjects to other ones, notably biology.

But Sarah Hallowell, a freshman global studies major, said she thinks that online tutoring would work better for some subjects, such as physics and economics.

“For more subjective discussion classes, the computer doesn’t always have all the answers,” she said.

Santee said the WebAssign is trying to enhance student interaction with tutors and TAs, not replace them entirely.

“While it does help reduce the number of questions, it doesn’t eliminate the need for TAs,” Deardorff said.

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