Innovative offering from Houghton Mifflin Company helps accounting students |
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| It’s 11 p.m. on Tuesday, the night before the big quiz worth a whopping 15% of the course grade. I have diligently plowed through the examples in the chapter. I read, I thought, I understood. Onward I go to the end-of-chapter problems. Assignment one—piece of cake. Assignment two—equally enjoyable. Assignment three—“Houston, we have a problem!” I am stuck. It’s too late to call my classmates, and they haven’t been able to help me half the time anyway. My personal accountant (a.k.a. Dad) is sleeping. Words in the textbook swim around in my brain, forming acrostic patterns of my favorite coffee purveyor, who supplied my last 6 cups. Where to get help? The folks at Houghton Mifflin Company think they have a solution to this crisis: free online tutors. Just fire up your trusty laptop, desktop, web appliance—whatever—visit the company’s accounting resource site at http://college.hmco.com/accounting, and click on the “HM Web Tutor” link. After a quick test to make sure your computer has the right stuff, and a simple sign-up process, you’re in business. Or, rather, in accounting. Just type in the chat box: “Hi, having trouble with problem #1, chapter 1, section 1. Could you help?” and the tutor will know what you’re talking about—the tutors have Houghton Mifflin textbooks on their desks. The accounting tutors are either experienced, active educators who are well acquainted with the learning process, or they are accounting professionals who have been given additional training in one-on-one instruction. Their primary goal is to coach you using the discovery approach, rather than hand out solutions to the assignments. They will also help you with the general concepts of accounting, and direct you to outside resources, if needed. There are certain things tutors will not do, however. Of course, you would never attempt to bring a take-home quiz to a tutor, but just in case…the tutors will not help with a problem that’s not in the book or the study guide. They will never disclose any student-specific information, speculate about grades, criticize a grade handed out, or make negative comments about a student, professor, or school. The tutoring interface is simple, too. The service is powered by tutor.com in partnership with Houghton Mifflin. Founded in 1999, tutor.com is a vast learning network with more than 20,000 registered tutors in approximately 400 subjects, both academic and non-academic. Tutor.com offers tutors the opportunity to teach from home or office, on any subject or expertise, at any time. Students normally pay for their tutoring online with a credit card, but the partnership with Houghton Mifflin gives students a number of pre-paid hours: from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. EST, which is useful for students in different time zones across the U.S. The coverage spans 7 days a week, with the exception of major holidays. If students need further help outside of the hours pre-paid by Houghton Mifflin, they can pay per minute according to each tutor’s individual rate. The paid sessions are much less costly than in-person tutoring, and possibly more effective because they happen on demand, when the student needs them. Students qualify for free tutoring when they purchase one of the two Houghton Mifflin textbooks listed below, and have access to the Internet through a full-function browser, such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. HM Web Tutor: http://college.hmco.com/accounting
Hours: 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. EST, 7 days per
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