Free Online Tutors Ready to Help RI Students Every Afternoon

Meredith Moore is a school librarian in Cranston and she wishes that there was a billboard on Route 95 advertising AskRI.org.

““This service is so amazing,” she said. ““Sometimes students need a little extra help, and thanks to AskRI.org, they can get it for free. If they signed up for an account on their own, it would cost $40 an hour. I tell my students it’s one of the best bargains they’ll ever encounter.”

From 2 to 10 p.m. every day, the service is free for Rhode Island students through the askRI.org site. In addition, study resources and test prep materials are available 24/7, from fifth-grade fraction worksheets to high-school chemistry flashcards.

To use the service, go to AskRI.org and click on the Homework Help icon. Then choose Student Center and click on the subject you need help with to be connected to a tutor. Creating an account also has its benefits; you can save tutor transcripts to refer to later for similar problems. Over 30,000 live tutoring sessions occurred last year.

“In 2014, most of our student tutoring sessions were for science topics,” says Beatrice Pulliam, AskRI.org director. “Writing critiques and SAT prep were also popular.”

AskRI is an online portal for services of the Statewide Reference Resource Center at the Providence Public Library.

Tutoring services are available for students at all grade levels.