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How do I give homework to online tutoring students? (And how much to set, how to deliver it in a browser-only workflow, and how to actually follow up)

Homework in online tutoring works best when it's small, specific, and mastery-focused — a single doable task the student can finish in 5-15 minutes on their own, that follows directly from what you did in the last lesson and directly into what you'll do in the next one. A working workflow is five moves: set at most one task per week (not one per lesson if you teach twice weekly; one task total), make it hyper-specific ("read pages 4-5 of the book we opened today, twice, and highlight three words you didn't know" beats "practice reading"), deliver it through the channel the parent already uses (WhatsApp, WeChat, or email — pick one, use it every time), make it visible in the classroom at the start of the next lesson (a sticky note on the shared whiteboard, a pinned message, whatever your platform supports), and follow up in the first 3 minutes of the next lesson whether or not they did it. The tools matter less than the discipline: for solo online tutors, a purpose-built classroom (Koala Go included) gives you the persistent whiteboard and cobrowser to demo the practice site during the lesson, but the actual "assign homework" step is almost always a message on WhatsApp or email — no platform ships a magic homework-delivery feature that replaces the tutor's follow-through. This page walks through what makes homework worth setting at all, how much to set by age and subject, how to deliver it in a browser-only workflow, how to follow up so the practice actually happens, and how Koala Go supports the pieces we do ship.

Should you give homework to online tutoring students at all?

Not always. Homework earns its cost when it does one of three things: it consolidates a specific skill the student almost has, it gives you diagnostic information for the next lesson, or it keeps the parent's sense of progress visible between paid hours. If a task doesn't do at least one of those, don't set it. A weekly worksheet that the student rushes through with no benefit to you or them is worse than no homework — it teaches the student that practice is a chore and it teaches the parent that homework is something you set for form's sake.

Set homework on purpose when:

  • The student has a small, specific skill that needs repetition to stick. A phonics pattern, a math fact family, a vocabulary set, a grammar structure the student almost gets in-lesson but slides on when unsupported. Twenty minutes of focused practice between lessons is more useful than an extra ten-minute drill inside the lesson.
  • You want to see what the student does without you in the room. An unsupervised reading, a solo problem set, a recorded speaking response — how the student performs alone tells you what they've internalised and what they were only doing because you were there. This is diagnostic information you can't get inside a lesson.
  • The parent needs a between-lesson touchpoint to feel that progress is happening. One thing the student is working on, that the parent can see the student doing on the sofa, is a warmer parent-facing signal than any weekly report. This matters most for retention in the first 2-3 months, before the parent has months of results to look back on.
  • The student is preparing for a deadline. Exam-prep students, board-exam students, university-application students — the deadline changes the math on between-lesson practice. See how do I teach exam prep online? for the full-length-practice-test cadence side of this.

Don't default to setting homework when:

  • The student is already overloaded from school. Many of the K-12 students you'll teach are doing school homework plus club activities plus your lesson. Adding another task to their week is a way to lose them. Ask the parent about the current workload in your first lesson; adjust.
  • You're not going to follow up on it. Homework you don't check is homework the student learns to skip. If you can't reliably ask about last week's task in the first five minutes of this week's lesson, don't set it.
  • The lesson pedagogy doesn't need practice between sessions. Some formats — a conversational-English hour with an adult, a weekly music-appreciation lesson, an unstructured curiosity-driven session with a young child — genuinely don't need homework. If the whole point of the lesson is what happens in the hour, don't invent between-lesson work to look thorough.
  • The student is very young. Under 6, the practice happens in the lesson itself — a 5-year-old's between-lesson homework is generally not doable without a parent doing it for them, which is not practice, it's parent-hours. Read below for the age-and-subject guidance.

What "homework" actually means in online tutoring (three shapes)

The word covers three fairly different things, and tutors get themselves in knots by mixing them:

  • Consolidation practice. The student repeats a skill you just taught, in a slightly different context, to make it stick. A phonics pattern, a math procedure, a grammar structure — 5-15 minutes of focused practice on the specific thing. Highest-leverage for young learners and structured-literacy work. Best delivered as a short, specific, single task.
  • Independent application / retrieval. The student applies what you've taught, unsupervised, on new material. A reading passage, a set of problems, a writing task — enough for them to notice where they're still shaky. Highest-leverage for older students, exam prep, and any subject where the goal is transfer beyond the practised examples. Best delivered as a task with a clear "how you'll know you're done" boundary.
  • Preparation for the next lesson. The student watches, reads, or does something small in advance so you can start the lesson at a higher point. A short article, a video, a warm-up reading, a Boom deck they'll build on next lesson. Highest-leverage for older students and any lesson format where prep matters. Best delivered with an explicit "we'll open this together next lesson" pointer.

You'll usually pick one per week. Two is too many; three is a way to make a student dread the lesson. Which of the three you pick depends on what the lesson just did and what the next lesson needs — not on what looks the most impressive to the parent.

How much and how often (the working ranges by age)

The honest answer varies more by student than by age, but the working ranges we hear from tutors on our platform hold up as defaults:

  • Ages 4-6. Not really "homework." Set one 5-minute practice — a book to look at, a sound to say, a game to play — that the parent facilitates. Frame it as "a fun thing for [child] and [parent] to do together this week" not as homework. Anything more is asking the parent to be the teacher.
  • Ages 7-10. One 10-15 minute task per week. The student can do it on their own with the parent as a background presence. Concrete beats generic ("read pages 4-5 of the book we opened today, twice" beats "practice reading"). Include one recognisable-to-the-parent element ("point to your favourite picture in the book and tell someone about it") — parents renew when they can see the child engaging with the practice on the sofa.
  • Ages 11-14. One 15-25 minute task per week, or two smaller tasks if the student is on a two-lesson-a-week cadence. This is the age band where "homework" starts to feel more like homework and the framing matters — call it "practice" or "work" rather than "homework" if the student is homework-fatigued from school. Give the student choice inside the task ("choose two of these five problems") when you can — autonomy at this age converts to effort.
  • Ages 15-18. One 25-45 minute task per week for general tutoring; 2-3 tasks totalling ~90 minutes for exam prep with a deadline. At this age, the student should own the practice — you're teaching them to study, not just to complete assignments. Ask them at the end of the lesson what they think would be worth practising this week; you veto or amend rather than dictate.
  • Adults. Whatever they'll actually do. Adult learners are usually paying for their own hours and have their own schedule constraints; over-set homework and they'll skip lessons rather than do the homework. Ask them, and set less than you'd think.

Two structural rules that hold across ages. First, small daily beats one large weekly. Fifteen minutes of practice five days a week is worth much more than seventy-five minutes on Sunday afternoon — the spacing does the work, and the daily habit is easier for the parent to enforce than the block. Second, if you can't tell the student in one sentence how they'll know they're done, the task is too vague. "Practice reading" is not a homework task; "read pages 4-5 twice and highlight three words you didn't know" is.

How to actually deliver homework in a browser-only workflow

Where "how do I deliver homework" gets stuck for online tutors is that unlike a physical classroom you can't hand the student a worksheet at the door. The three real options — and their tradeoffs:

  1. A message on the parent's channel. The most reliable. At the end of the lesson (or within an hour), send the parent one message on whatever channel you agreed on in onboarding (WhatsApp, WeChat, email, or SMS — one channel, always the same) with the specific task. Keep it to 3-5 lines: what the task is, roughly how long, what the student needs (a pencil, the book, a laptop), and one line about what to do if the student gets stuck ("if she's not sure about a word, guess and highlight it — we'll look at it Tuesday"). The parent bookmarks, the student sees the message, the practice happens. This is the shape that survives most tutoring workflows.
  2. A note left on the shared classroom. On Koala Go, uploaded material stays on the whiteboard between lessons — you can drop a sticky note on the shared canvas at the end of a lesson with the practice task and the student will see it when they open the classroom next week. This works well for older students who log in independently and for tasks where the practice happens inside the classroom itself (annotate a page, watch a clip, mark a paragraph). For younger students whose parents open the classroom for them, the sticky note is less reliable than a WhatsApp message — the parent may not click into the whiteboard between lessons.
  3. A link to an external practice site the student already uses. If your student uses Reading A-Z, Epic, IXL, Wordwall, Boom Learning, Duolingo, Khan Academy, or the exam board's own practice site (ETS TOEFL Sampler, Cambridge Test & Train, College Board Digital SAT practice), the "homework" is often "spend 10 minutes on X this week." You send the link via the parent's channel; the student does the practice on the site's own tracking. Two things to make this work: (a) walk the student through the site once inside a lesson using the cobrowser (see what is a cobrowser?) so they know exactly where they're going, and (b) ask about the specific thing they did on the site at the start of the next lesson, not "how was Duolingo this week?" — otherwise the site becomes a check-a-box activity that the student clicks through without learning.

The single move most solo tutors miss is the walk-through of the practice site during the lesson. A student who has watched you open Reading A-Z, click the exact button they need to click, and hear the exact sound of a completed task is meaningfully more likely to do it themselves than a student who only received a link. On Koala Go the cobrowser is what makes this a shared moment — the student clicks through the site on their own side while you watch, which teaches the muscle memory the passive "here's how you use it" screenshare doesn't. On the Free tier the cobrowser is capped at 10 minutes at a time with a 20-minute cooldown; on Pro it's unlimited, which is what you want for a full practice-site tour.

Following up — the workflow that makes homework worth setting

Homework you don't follow up on is homework the student learns to skip, and homework the parent learns not to enforce. The follow-up matters more than the task itself. A working shape:

  • Start the next lesson by asking, not by teaching. The first 3 minutes: "How did the reading go? Which words did you highlight?" The student expects the question, so the answer starts to shape their week. Whether they did the task or not, you find out in the first 3 minutes rather than the middle.
  • If they did the task, use it inside the lesson. Don't just note it — actually build the lesson on the practice. If they highlighted three unknown words, spend 5 minutes on those three words. If they finished the problem set, pick one they got wrong and unpack it together. The student needs to see that the practice fed into what happened in the lesson — otherwise the practice reads as homework-for-homework's-sake.
  • If they didn't do the task, don't punish it. Ask what got in the way. Adjust for next week — smaller task, different day, a different framing, or nothing at all if the family's week was hard. Punitive homework enforcement produces resentment; problem-solving with the family produces a workable pattern. Repeat non-completion at 3+ weeks in a row is a signal to have the "should we drop homework" conversation with the parent, not a signal to double down.
  • Adjust the task shape based on what actually happened. If the student did more than you set, next week is bigger. If they did less, next week is smaller. If they did a different thing than you set — "she didn't do the reading but she read a different book to her sister three times" — celebrate the actual practice and pivot next week's task to build on it. Kids learn what to do, not what you assigned.
  • Loop the parent in on what you noticed. The one-line-per-week message home ("Anya highlighted three words this weekend — 'gigantic', 'shivered', 'wondered'. We spent the first 10 minutes today on those and she's got them now.") is what turns homework into visible progress the parent sees. Do this in the recap message you'd be sending anyway; don't make it a separate note.

How Koala Go supports the homework workflow specifically

Being direct about what Koala Go does and doesn't ship for homework, because the honest picture matters:

  • Persistent whiteboard as a "note left for next lesson." On Koala Go, uploaded material and drawings stay on the whiteboard between lessons — you can reopen the same board next week without reuploading. That means the specific mechanic of "leave a sticky note on the shared canvas at the end of the lesson with the practice task" works: the student opens the classroom next week and the note is there. For older students who log into the classroom independently, this is a low-friction between-lesson touchpoint. For younger students who need a parent to open the classroom, treat the sticky note as a backup rather than the primary channel.
  • Cobrowser for the practice-site walk-through. During a lesson, open the external practice site the student will use for their between-lesson task — Reading A-Z, IXL, Wordwall, Boom Learning, Duolingo, the exam board's own practice — inside the cobrowser. Both of you have live control of the same page: the student clicks, types, and navigates while you watch. That single "we did this together in-lesson before I asked you to do it alone" shift is what makes external homework sites actually get used between lessons. On Koala Free the cobrowser is capped at 10 minutes per session with a 20-minute cooldown; on Koala Pro ($25.99/month monthly, $21.99/month billed annually) it's unlimited.
  • PDF and PowerPoint upload for a worksheet on the shared canvas. Koala Pro's PDF and PowerPoint upload lets you drop a practice worksheet directly onto the whiteboard for the student to annotate. Common patterns: upload a phonics worksheet, ask the student to fill it in during the lesson, and leave the annotated version on the whiteboard so the student can return to it as their between-lesson review; or send a fresh copy of the worksheet as an email attachment via the parent's channel for the student to complete and bring back next lesson. Image upload is on the Free tier; PDF and PowerPoint upload is on Pro.
  • Recording as pre-homework review material. On Koala Pro, record a short clip of the specific thing you want the student to review — the sounding-out of the tricky word, the working-through of the problem, the pronunciation of the vocabulary set — and send it to the parent via the same channel you use for the homework message. Recording a full lesson is the wrong shape for this — you're sending a 30-second clip, not a 45-minute file. Consent, storage, and retention are covered on how do I record online tutoring lessons?. Recording is a Pro-and-above feature.
  • Class notes on Platinum as the draft of the parent message. Auto-generated class notes on Koala Platinum ($49.99/month monthly, $39.99/month billed annually) produce a draft summary after each lesson that you can edit into the parent-facing "here's what we did and here's this week's practice" note. You'll still write the specific task line yourself — the class notes give you the "here's what we did" half — but they cut the barrier that stops most tutors from sending the note every week. On Free and Pro you're writing the whole note yourself; it's five lines, but the five lines are the barrier.
  • Scheduling as the homework-adjacent touchpoint. On Koala Pro, the built-in Scheduling gives the family a booking link and a lesson calendar they can check between sessions. Koala doesn't send the homework prompt for you — but if you send your own day-before message on the family's channel ("Tomorrow's lesson at 4pm — remember to try the reading practice before we start"), the homework prompt rides along with the lesson reminder you were sending anyway, at no extra effort. See how do I schedule online tutoring lessons? for the scheduling shape.

Honest limits — what Koala Go doesn't ship for homework today

Koala Go is built around the live lesson — the persistent whiteboard, cobrowser, recording, and scheduling above are the homework-adjacent pieces we ship. What we don't ship:

  • No student-side homework portal or assign-and-track flow. There's no between-lesson student area with an assignment queue, and no button that sends a task and returns a "done / not done" tick. In Koala's world the assignment is a message on the family's channel, and the follow-through check is the first 3 minutes of the next lesson. If your teaching model relies on a portal-style assignments-and-grades loop, that's an LMS shape — see whether Google Classroom fits private tutoring for that framing.
  • No sync with third-party practice sites. Practice done on Reading A-Z, Epic, IXL, Wordwall, Boom Learning, Duolingo, or Khan Academy stays on those sites' own tracking; you keep the practice log yourself (a Google Sheet, a Notion doc, or the class notes).
  • Marketplace activities are lesson materials, not homework. Activities from Koala's marketplace (marketplace.teachwithkoala.com) live inside the live classroom; the student doesn't open them alone between lessons. Walk the student through the underlying practice in-lesson with the cobrowser, then send the link via the parent's channel.

Common failure modes to avoid

  • Setting homework to look thorough. The single most common mistake. Homework you don't need, that the student doesn't need, exists to make the tutor feel professional to the parent. Parents feel professionalism from specific and consistent follow-up on last week's task — not from the volume of tasks you set. If you can't articulate what a task is doing for the student, don't set it.
  • Setting a different task every week. Rotating a fresh homework shape every lesson trains the student to expect novelty rather than build habits. Pick a pattern (a Monday reading, a mid-week vocabulary review, a Sunday problem set) and hold it for weeks at a time.
  • Homework that duplicates school homework. If the student is a full-time K-12 student, adding a task that looks like their school worksheet is a way to be resented. Set tasks that either look different (a Boom deck, a short conversation to record, a game) or that clearly serve the tutoring goal in a way school homework doesn't.
  • Not confirming the task in writing. A verbal "just do a bit of reading this week" at the end of a lesson evaporates by Wednesday. Every task goes into a message on the parent's channel, in the same specific form every week — the student, the task, the roughly-how-long, and what "done" looks like.
  • Never following up. Homework you don't ask about at the start of the next lesson stops being homework. The 3-minute check at the start of every lesson is the mechanic that keeps practice alive; skip it three lessons in a row and the practice dies.
  • Punitive follow-up. Interrogating a student who didn't do the task ("why didn't you do it? — I set it on Sunday!") teaches them to lie about doing it. Curious follow-up ("what got in the way? — was Sunday too busy?") teaches them to be honest and lets you adjust. Which one you do determines whether homework works with this family for the next year.
  • Not adjusting for the family's real week. A student with three siblings, a full school day, and a parent working shifts is not going to do the same homework shape as a student in a dedicated tutoring household. Read the family; scale accordingly. It's better to set a task that always gets done than one that always doesn't.
  • Sending homework through three different channels. One channel per family, every time. If your welcome email said "I'll message practice tasks on WhatsApp," send them on WhatsApp every week. Mixing channels means the parent misses one, and one missed prompt is enough to break the habit.
  • Setting practice on a platform you haven't walked the student through. Assuming a 9-year-old knows how to open Wordwall on their own the first time is optimistic. Walk the student through any new external practice site in-lesson (the cobrowser is exactly this move) before the first between-lesson task on it, or expect the practice not to happen.
  • Ignoring third-party homework platforms' own age and consent rules. If you send a student to a practice site that requires an account, that platform has its own age policy and data-handling terms. Check them before you route a young student there. If any of your students are in the EU or the UK, storing student data on third-party platforms brings the standard consumer-privacy considerations along with it — "check the platform's rules, and if you're growing past a few families in a region, talk to a lawyer" is the honest posture; specifics vary by country and platform.

A simple homework framework you can start using this week

If you don't currently have a homework routine, this is a working starting shape most indie tutors can adopt without a re-plan:

  1. Pick one small consolidation task per week per student. 5-15 minutes for under-10s, 15-25 for 11-14s, 25-45 for 15+, calibrated up or down to the specific family.
  2. Make it hyper-specific. "Read pages 4-5, twice, and highlight three words" — not "practice reading." The student should be able to answer "am I done?" with a yes or a no.
  3. Send it within an hour of the lesson. On the parent's channel (one channel, always the same). Not from three different apps.
  4. Leave a visual marker in the classroom too. On Koala Go, a sticky note on the shared whiteboard the student will see when they open the room next week is the low-friction "in-classroom" reminder.
  5. Ask about it in the first 3 minutes of the next lesson. Whether they did it or not, it's the first thing you cover.
  6. Adjust based on what actually happened. Smaller task if it didn't get done, bigger task if it flew, same task if the fit is right.
  7. Loop the parent in via the recap message. One line about what the practice fed into ("Anya highlighted three words this weekend — we worked on them today and she's got them now") — that line is where the parent feels progress.
  8. Review the shape every 4-6 weeks. Ask the parent whether the current homework pattern is working for them, and ask the student what they'd rather practise. Their answers usually tell you what to keep and what to change.

If you're considering Koala Go specifically for the between-lesson-practice workflow, the persistent whiteboard, the sticky-note-for-next-lesson pattern, and the practice-site walk-through with cobrowser preview all work on the Free tier — enough to run this framework with your next student before deciding whether the Pro upgrade (which unlocks unlimited cobrowser, PDF and PowerPoint upload, recording, and Scheduling) is worth it. Open Koala Go at classroom.teachwithkoala.com, or write to koala@teachwithkoala.com with a sentence about your subject and student age and we'll give you an honest read on the fit.

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