Which tools should you use to give private tutoring sessions online?

Good digital equipment does not automatically turn a session into a good one. Above all, it lets the tutor see what the student is doing, quickly access the right material and keep the thread between two appointments. For each tool, the useful question therefore remains: what concrete problem does it solve before, during or after the session?

This logic is in line with the review of education technology published by the Education Endowment Foundation in July 2025. It combines a systematic review, a meta-analysis and qualitative research. Its overall conclusion is nuanced: technology can support teaching, but its effects depend on the educational mechanism and on how the tool is implemented. A whiteboard, a replay or an AI therefore add nothing simply by being there.

The essential tools for giving private tutoring sessions online

Need	Possible tools	Real use	Watch out for
Video call	Google Meet, Zoom	Talking, sharing the screen, observing the student	Stability, sound, time limit
Whiteboard	Whiteboard.fi, Miro, built-in space	Writing, drawing and making reasoning visible	Complexity and room left for the student
Documents	Google Drive, Docs, platform	Centralising marked work, exercises and corrections	Access rights and scattering
Scheduling	Google Calendar, built-in booking	Managing time slots and avoiding double bookings	Advanced features sometimes paid
Messages	Email or built-in messages	Keeping an identifiable thread	Multiplying channels
Payment	A solution suited to your status, or a platform	Keeping track of payments	Does not replace the administrative framework
After the session	Report, homework, replay, transcript	Linking one session to the next	Piling up records that are never reused

1. Start from the tutor’s real needs and their subject

The right online tutoring software depends first and foremost on what the student needs to do. In English, sound quality and speaking time come first. In French, you often need to read, highlight or annotate a text. In maths or physics, the tutor must be able to observe the steps of a calculation, a proof or a diagram.

Before choosing a tool, sort its features into three categories:

• essential: without them, the session works noticeably less well;
• useful: they save time or improve certain activities;
• optional: they enrich the interface without really changing the student’s work.

For a maths tutor, seeing the student write is often essential. A virtual background is not. For a language tutor, a sophisticated whiteboard may be secondary, whereas a poor microphone can hamper the whole session. For a philosophy tutor, being able to work together on an essay plan or a paragraph may be more useful than a drawing tool.

You also need to distinguish today’s need from the needs of your tutoring activity as a whole. An occasional student can be supported with a video call, a document and an email. With ten regular students, the difficulty also becomes knowing where the marked papers are, who has a session tomorrow, what needed reworking and which parent is waiting for a reply.

Our guide to online private tutoring explores the conditions for an effective session from the student’s and family’s point of view. Here, the aim is different: to build a working environment simple enough for technology to stay at the tutor’s service.

2. Video calls: prioritise sound and stability

A video call for academic support must above all be easy to join and stable enough not to interrupt the reasoning. A very high-definition webcam is rarely a priority compared with clear sound, a steady connection and reliable screen sharing.

Google Meet for one-to-one sessions

Current Google Meet documentation states that a user without a subscription can host a one-to-one meeting on a computer lasting up to 24 hours. With three or more participants, the stated limit is 60 minutes.

For a tutor-student session, Meet therefore offers a simple base: video, audio and screen sharing. You do, however, need to pair it with another tool if you want the student to write or to annotate their documents comfortably.

Zoom: check the free account limit

Zoom’s official documentation states that almost all meetings hosted with a free Basic licence are limited to 40 minutes. A session planned for an hour therefore requires a suitable plan or means a break.

The choice between Meet and Zoom does not come down only to the number of features. If the student connects easily, the sound stays stable and screen sharing works, the video call is already doing most of its job.

Have a plan B

Before the first session, test the microphone, the camera, screen sharing and opening documents. Also prepare a solution in case the connection deteriorates: turning off video temporarily, continuing on a shared document or keeping a second means of communication available.

This redundancy seems unimportant until the moment a student is stuck on a question and the audio cuts out. The best “backup tool” is usually the one that has already been tested, not the one you discover in the middle of the session.

3. Whiteboard, writing and screen sharing: making reasoning visible

The tutor’s whiteboard becomes particularly important in subjects where the approach matters as much as the result.

In maths, asking “what did you get?” provides less information than watching the student expand an expression themselves. If the mistake appears on the second line, the tutor can step in exactly at the right place. The same logic applies in physics for a force diagram or in grammar for analysing a sentence.

Whiteboard.fi: useful when the student has to produce work

Whiteboard.fi offers, among other things, an equation editor, graphs, tools for angles and fractions, a ruler and a protractor. Complex expressions can also be entered in LaTeX.

Its educational value lies in providing a visible workspace rather than leaving the student to answer only orally. Students can join a session via a link or a code, according to Whiteboard.fi’s documentation.

Importing PDFs is also possible so you can annotate a question paper or a piece of marked work, but this feature is currently listed as reserved for the Pro or Premium plans. It is a good example of a criterion to check before choosing a tool: the feature you actually need is not always included in the free offer.

Miro: relevant for highly visual content

Miro is more general-purpose. It is useful for mind maps, timelines, plans, diagrams or sessions in which a lot of information is organised spatially. Its Education plan is currently offered free of charge to staff and students at eligible institutions, on application and with supporting documents.

To solve a collège (lower secondary school) equation quickly, however, it may be richer than necessary. A tool is not better because it has more buttons or templates.

Screen sharing must not make the student passive

Sharing a correction is useful for showing a method. Doing it throughout the session can give a misleading impression of understanding: everything seems simple when someone else is choosing the steps.

After an explanation, hand control back to the student. The right tool shortens the distance between “the student is thinking” and “the tutor sees how they are thinking”. It should not turn the session into a constant demonstration by the tutor.

4. Documents, homework and corrections: create a single point of reference

Scattering often starts with little things: a marked paper by email, an exercise in a messaging app, a correction in Drive and the work for the next session in personal notes.

With several students, create a single point of reference that can hold:

• marked work and assessments;
• materials used;
• exercises to prepare;
• important corrections;
• priorities to come back to.

Google Drive and Docs may be enough. The Google Drive documentation distinguishes between viewer, commenter and editor rights. This granularity is useful: a student may sometimes need to comment on a document without being able to change the original.

For school files, limit access to the people concerned and avoid making documents publicly accessible when there is no reason for them to be. A well-organised folder is only useful if the permissions are under control too.

A correction must lead to an action

Annotating a paper digitally is not a method in itself. A more useful loop is to identify the important mistake, have the student explain their approach, correct the underlying mechanism, ask the student to redo a similar task and then note the point to check in the next session.

The software therefore makes record-keeping and collaboration easier. It is up to the tutor to decide which mistake really deserves work and which document will be useful the following week.

5. Scheduling, messages and payments: limiting administrative work

As your activity grows, organisation can become more costly than expected: finding a slot, tracking down exchanges, confirming a session, sending a document and checking a payment. This time is not visible during the video call, but it is part of the real work.

Automate only what is repeated

Google Calendar appointment schedules let you create a booking page, publish your availability and automatically add appointments to your calendar while blocking slots that are already taken. Some additional features are tied to a paid subscription.

For two regular students, this set-up may be overkill. For a tutor who exchanges with several families every week to find time slots, it can save a lot of messages. Automation becomes useful when it removes a repetitive task, not when it adds another interface to manage.

Choose one main messaging channel

The tutor can keep several means of contact, but important information should have a predictable place. If the parent writes by text message, the student on another messaging app and documents arrive by email, you have to rebuild the context before every session.

One main channel for schedules, instructions and documents reduces this risk. It also makes it possible to separate professional exchanges more clearly from personal conversations.

Payment must remain clear

The tutor must be able to see easily whether a session is confirmed and paid for. The right solution then depends on their status and organisation. A payment feature is no proof of educational quality and never replaces the administrative or tax obligations that apply to the activity.

6. Replay, transcription and follow-up: keeping what is genuinely useful

After the session, the opposite mistake is to store everything. An hour of video, a full transcript and several documents do not automatically create good follow-up.

A replay can help find a demonstration, the correction of an exercise or a specific explanation again. It is less likely that a student will systematically rewatch an entire hour-long session. A short record therefore remains useful: what did we work on, what is still shaky and what needs redoing before the next session?

Can you record a video call?

Yes, if the tool and the plan you use offer this feature. Google Meet currently reserves recording for certain editions and configurations, as its official documentation states. The same page specifies that an administrator can require participants’ explicit consent before features such as recording or transcription are used.

Beyond this software feature, a video call processes personal data: voice, image, messages and sometimes school documents. The CNIL (the French data protection authority) recommends checking the terms of use, the confidentiality guarantees and how data is used, with particular care where minors are concerned.

Retention must also have a purpose. The CNIL pointed out in April 2026 that personal data cannot be kept indefinitely and that the retention period must be determined according to the objective pursued.

In practice, then, do not record every session automatically just because the button exists. Define what the replay is for, who can access it and for how long keeping it remains justified in your organisation.

7. Separate tools or a centralised platform?

Putting together several specialised tools is often a sensible way to start. The drawback appears when the same information is spread across several accounts, links and histories.

Set-up	Advantage	Limitation
Separate tools	Freedom to choose each service and low start-up cost	Scattered information and files
Video + built-in whiteboard	Fewer switches during the session	Scheduling and follow-up sometimes stay elsewhere
Centralised platform	A single thread before, during and after the session	Less freedom in choosing each tool

A combination such as Google Meet + Whiteboard.fi + Drive + Calendar can be quite enough for a few students. Centralisation becomes more attractive when you repeat the same administrative operations every week or waste time tracking down the history of a student’s support.

What NOEO centralises for tutors

NOEO addresses this problem with a Tutor space that brings together sessions, students, exchanges, documents and the tracking of Payouts, among other things. Each student keeps a history of sessions and Session reports, along with everything needed to pick up the support without searching for information across several applications.

During the session, NOEO Live serves as a built-in interactive session space. The need it meets is simple: limiting changes of environment while the tutor explains, draws or works with the student.

After the session, the tutor writes a Session report and can specify the work to prepare. When recording has been authorised, the replay remains accessible for 3 months. From a completed session, the student can also trigger the creation of a Learn pack themselves, which can contain a revision sheet, flashcards or a quiz. It is therefore neither created automatically after each session nor a mandatory action for the tutor.

The NOEO journey before, during and after the session shows how these steps fit together for the tutor, the student and the parent. The value of a centralised platform is not to make teaching automatically better; it is to reduce the number of breaks between preparation, the session and follow-up.

Which set-up should you choose for your activity?

Situation	Reasonable set-up
A few regular students	Video + whiteboard or shared document + Drive + calendar
Maths / physics	Video + a whiteboard the student can write on; stylus if comfortable
Languages	Stable video + chat + documents and audio materials
French / philosophy	Video + collaborative document + annotation
A growing activity	More centralised scheduling, messages, documents, payments and follow-up

Criteria for choosing without being seduced by the spec sheet

Before adopting a new tool, test it on a real session scenario. Can you invite a student easily? Can they write without creating a complicated account? Can you find the document again the following week? Does the session work on an average computer? Can the tutor see immediately where the student went wrong?

A simple grid helps you avoid gadgets:

• access friction: how many steps before you can start working?
• student activity: does the tool let them produce work rather than just watch?
• continuity: can you find what was done in the next session?
• compatibility: does it work on the equipment families actually have?
• confidentiality: can access and data be managed properly?
• total cost: are the essential features free or paid?
• time saved: does it replace an existing task or simply add a new interface?

A tutor who is just starting out therefore does not need to reproduce the technical environment of an online school. What they need first is a set-up that is reliable, understandable and consistent with their subject. Additional tools become relevant when a real problem appears: documents too scattered, schedules hard to coordinate, follow-up impossible to find or an educational need the current set-up does not cover.

If you are looking for an environment where these tasks are linked to student follow-up, you can find out how NOEO works for tutors. Applying is currently free, and each application is reviewed according to subjects, levels, experience and the framework of the Quality Charter.