Concentration in online tutoring: 12 practical levers for staying focused

Digital tools can help: a shared whiteboard makes reasoning visible, a document can be annotated immediately and a tutor can get the student involved without changing environment. But the same computer also gives access to messages, social media, videos and tabs that compete with the session.

The right criterion is therefore not “are we using lots of tools?”, but: does this tool help the student stay on task and produce something? The 12 levers below start from that question.

1. Prepare the workspace before the session

Lever 1 — Set up an environment dedicated to the session

A good session starts before logging in. The student does not need a perfect desk, but a space where objects unrelated to the session do not constantly come within reach.

In practice: phone out of reach if it is not being used for the session, television off, headset if the surroundings are noisy, chair and screen set up comfortably. For a teenager, simply having to resist a phone lying next to the keyboard for an hour adds an unnecessary temptation.

A systematic review of digital distractions in education published in 2025 brought together 26 articles and distinguishes factors linked to technology, to personal needs and to the learning environment. Among the responses studied, it lists environment rules, technological controls and behavioural interventions. The contexts studied vary, so the takeaway is the general principle of reducing distractions, not a single recipe for every student.

Lever 2 — Prepare everything that will be used

Looking for the textbook, downloading the test or finding a photo in a messaging app breaks the flow of the session. Before the session, open the documents you need and keep paper, pen, calculator or textbook within reach.

This lever seems trivial, but it reduces context switching. A thirty-second interruption can easily become an opportunity to open a notification or another tab.

2. Reduce digital distractions instead of relying on willpower

Lever 3 — Turn off unnecessary notifications

During the session, switch on a focus or “do not disturb” mode on the computer and phone. Close messaging apps that are not used for the session.

A meta-analysis of 27 experiments published in Computers in Human Behavior concludes that mobile phone distraction has a medium-sized negative effect on immediate recall in young adults. This research mainly concerns young adults, not all secondary school students, but it reinforces a simple practical rule: do not ask the student to constantly resist prompts that can be switched off.

Lever 4 — Keep only the tabs you need

An online session does not usually require fifteen open tabs. Keep the video call space, the document being worked on and, if necessary, one additional resource. Close the rest.

The problem is not the existence of a browser: it is task switching. A literature review on distractions in online learning identifies, among other things, multitasking, mind-wandering and the competing use of digital devices as recurring sources of distraction. When the student switches between the session and a personal conversation, the two activities compete for their attention.

3. Break the session into active sequences

Lever 5 — Change the type of task before the session becomes passive

There is no need to change topic every ten minutes. On the other hand, staying in the same mode for fifty minutes — listening to an explanation — demands little of the student.

A session can move through:

• a diagnostic question;
• a short explanation;
• an example worked through together;
• an exercise done by the student;
• a reasoned correction;
• a similar task done with less help.

The meta-analysis by Freeman and colleagues of 225 studies showed better average results with active learning than with traditional lecturing in university science teaching. This result does not directly measure the concentration of a collège (lower secondary school) student on a video call and should not be transposed as a guarantee. It nonetheless supports the choice of getting the student to produce something rather than keeping the whole session in passive listening.

Lever 6 — Regularly ask for a short piece of output

A question like “did you understand?” gives little information. Ask instead: “explain the method to me without looking”, “what’s the next step?”, “show me where you’re stuck” or “do this calculation on your own”.

The session then becomes a series of small, observable outputs. The tutor immediately sees whether the student is still following the reasoning and can change their explanation before another ten minutes are built on a misunderstanding.

You also need to accept a few seconds of silence. On a video call, the tutor may be tempted to fill every pause immediately because it seems longer on screen. Yet the student sometimes simply needs time to think. Giving the answer too quickly keeps up an apparent pace but reduces cognitive activity. A clear instruction, an announced time to work things out and then a targeted prompt make it possible to tell reflection apart from genuinely switching off.

4. Get the student writing and explaining

Lever 7 — Keep a written record during the session

Writing forces you to select information. It is not about copying down everything the tutor says, but about keeping a formula, a definition, a step in a method, a mistake to avoid or a question.

The medium can be paper or digital. The right choice is the one that does not add friction. If the student spends more time organising their note-taking app than understanding the problem, the tool becomes a distraction.

Lever 8 — Have the student rephrase rather than repeat

After an explanation, the tutor can ask: “explain what you’ve just understood as if you were the one teaching it”. The student then has to rebuild the connections rather than passively recognise the tutor’s words: this is an application of active recall.

Retrieval practice points in the same direction. In an experiment published in Science in 2011, Karpicke and Blunt observed among students an advantage of actively retrieving knowledge over a form of elaborative study with concept maps on delayed tests. The study was not about attention in online sessions; above all, it shows why asking the student to produce an answer is more informative than asking whether they recognise the explanation.

5. Use the whiteboard and documents to do, not to decorate

Lever 9 — Have the student use the whiteboard

A shared whiteboard is useful if the student writes an equation, places a vector, annotates a text or builds a diagram. If it is only used by the tutor to reproduce a lecture on screen, its interactive value is low.

In private tutoring, technology above all lets the tutor see the reasoning as it is being built. A mistake becomes visible before the final result: a wrong sign, a forgotten piece of data, a misinterpreted quotation. The tutor can then step in at the right point.

Lever 10 — Display one main medium at a time

Video call, whiteboard, PDF, chat, video, browser and notes can all be useful, but not necessarily at the same time. When several elements are competing for the screen, ask which medium is actually carrying the current task and minimise the rest.

On NOEO, NOEO Live serves as the built-in interactive classroom. The point is not to make the student attentive automatically, but to allow the tutor and the student to explain, write and work in the same environment. How things work before, during and after the session is explained on NOEO’s How it works page.

6. Plan suitable micro-breaks, without inventing a universal “attention span”

Lever 11 — Use a short break when the quality of work drops

A break can be useful when the student rereads the same instruction several times, answers mechanically, fidgets or can no longer get going again after a mistake. They can then stand up, look somewhere other than the screen, drink some water and come back to a clear task.

A systematic review with meta-analysis on active breaks at school notes some positive effects on attention measures, in particular selective attention, while stressing that results vary between studies. A more recent study of university students also found better performance with more frequent micro-breaks. This research does not justify a rigid rule such as “compulsory break every fifteen minutes”.

In fact, this 10 to 15 minute rule is poorly supported. A literature review on attention span during lectures concludes that the available data do not support the existence of a general limit of 10 to 15 minutes.

When a break is needed, it also works better if it genuinely breaks away from the screen: standing up, briefly changing posture or looking into the distance makes more sense than immediately opening a video or social media. The aim is not to add new digital stimulation but to create a short pause before returning to a clearly defined task.

7. Measure concentration without judging the student

Lever 12 — Observe specific behaviours rather than attaching a label

“Lack of concentration” is a very broad conclusion. To act, the tutor needs to describe what is happening:

• the student loses the thread during long explanations;
• they stay engaged when writing but drift off when listening;
• instructions have to be repeated after an interruption;
• they quickly open another app when the problem becomes difficult;
• they stay focused on short tasks but need prompting on long problems.

These observations lead to different decisions. In the first case, you shorten the explanation; in the second, you increase participation; in the third, you reduce interruptions; in the last, you can break the problem down further.

The camera is not an attention detector

Seeing a student’s face can give the tutor non-verbal cues and make interaction easier, but a camera that is switched on does not prove that the student is thinking about the task. Conversely, a camera that is switched off does not prove disengagement.

The literature on cameras in synchronous teaching remains mixed and highly dependent on context. A recent systematic review notes both possible benefits in terms of presence and engagement and obstacles linked in particular to privacy, anxiety, fatigue or technical constraints. Real participation — answers, reasoning, writing, questions — therefore remains a better practical indicator than the image alone.

On NOEO, after the session the tutor can record observations on concentration and engagement in the session report, when they are relevant. The aim is to follow a trend, not to give a behaviour mark. A wording such as “more prompting needed during long exercises” is more usable than “concentration: poor”.

A simple routine before, during and after the session

When	Action
Before	Prepare the documents, close unnecessary apps and remove distractions.
Start	Set the goal and begin with a question or a short task.
During	Alternate explanation, writing, exercises, rephrasing and correction.
If attention drops	Change the type of task or take a short break rather than carrying on mechanically.
End	Have the student rephrase what they have understood and define what needs more work.
After	Keep a factual record of what helped or hindered participation.

To choose the format and conditions of remote support more broadly, our guide to online private tutoring sets out the criteria for a genuinely interactive session. If the hesitation is about the format itself, the comparison between online and home private tutoring lets you reason from the student’s needs rather than systematically pitting the two formats against each other.

Finally, concentration also depends on overall organisation. A session squeezed into the middle of an overloaded evening, with no materials prepared and no time to catch your breath, starts at a disadvantage. Our guide to a school routine that lasts therefore complements these levers when the problem goes beyond the online session itself.