15 Online Math Help and Tutoring Resources

A variety of free and paid resources to help students struggling with Mathematics.

With the recent completion of the first quarter for many K-12 students, and the pending completion of the first semester for many Higher Ed students, I thought it would be a good time to investigate web based tutoring and help options. I'll focus first on the fundamentals – Math (this week) and English (next week), and possibly follow up with a third post focused on resources for other subjects.

I checked out a lot of the many options available online and selected those that looked worthwhile. I've grouped them into Free and Paid options, and provided some brief observations about each. If you're looking for math help for yourself or a child or friend, these sites should be able to provide some of the help you seek.

Paid options
I do not have  direct personal experience with all of these sites, but I selected only sites that appeared to be highly professional and legitimate (there were plenty of other sites that I discarded because they did not appear so, or I had come across negative reviews). Some of these sites are well known, and I am confident that all of them should provide functional services (of course, if anyone knows otherwise, please comment and fill us in!).

• Smarthinking.com: These folks are well known – they've become quite popular because they work with many educational institutions as a supplemental support tool, but they also offer individual tutoring plans. Click here to learn more.
• Tutoringclub.com: This site guarantees “to improve academic performance in less time and at a lower cost than any other program”.
• 1-1tutor.com: This site offers a 2 week free trial. The testimonials sound quite genuine, and the free trial and professional site design impressed me.
• Hotmath.com: This site provides step-by-step answers to the questions in dozens of popular math text books, and has tutors standing by to help (at a fee, of course).
• Tutor.com's Math section: This site looks impressive and it provides paid tutoring in a wide variety of subjects. $20 for the firsty 30 minutes. Looks like it's worth a closer look.
• Tutorvista.com: This site was the top pick from this Wall Street Journal online article about online homework help.
• Tutapoint.com: This interesting site offers help videos categorized by topic, at tiered prices (such as $1.99 for a day), as well as one on one tutoring (at $14 per half hour).
• Instantmathtutor.com: This site has a “$4.95 for 60 minutes” special offer, and posts daily “rave reviews”.
• TutorCentral.net: The link I've provided here goes directly to a page that explains how to submit a tutoring request to this site.

Free options
These sites do not provide the kind of one on one interaction that many students need in order to help them through their challenges, but free help is something we can all afford, and the help offered can be pretty useful. These are not the only free help option available online, but they're the ones I found that looked most useful.

• Webmath.com: This site allows you to enter equations and have it solve them and show you the solution! The automated problem solver may include some irrelevant information, but the sophistication of the site, at no charge, is pretty cool. The site covers a wide range of math subjects. I used it with some of my son's 7th grade algebra homework, and it was spot on.
• Math.com: There really is a Math.com? Yes, there is. This site provides some free practice and review resources. They have a lot of ads, but that's often the “price” of free.
• Onlinemathlearning.com: This site provides helpful explanations and illustrations of math concepts in a wide range of math subjects. Some of their help pages include instructional videos.
• CliffNotes.com: The Cliff Notes web site provides free study help in many subjects, including math.
• Ask Dr. Math (on the Math Forum @ Drexel): This site is provided by Drexel University, and provides a pretty robust archive of questions and answers to browse, grouped by education level (elementary, middle school, high school, etc.).
• Coolmath.com: This colorful site provides lessons for arithmetic, pre-algebra, and algebra.
• Free math tutorials from Brightstorm.com: http://www.brightstorm.com/d/math/ (I just came across this today and have added it to this listing – KW 1/7/10)

Of course, this is by no means an exhaustive, all-inclusive listing – there are many options out there, but this listing does provide a lot of good resources. If anyone has any observations about these sites, or knows of any others they would like to recommend, we'd love to hear your observations, so please comment and let us know what you know! Thanks.

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