Online tutoring—where instructors reach students via the internet, often using videoconferencing—has continued to grow in popularity. Some have begun to investigate how learners fare in this environment compared to traditional face-to-face classrooms. But fewer have looked into how teachers use and adapt to this environment. A recent academic article, however, looks into certain effects of the online environment. Specifically, the investigators wanted to see what effect student absenteeism had on online tutors. They discovered that, following a student no-show, online teachers smiled less and were, themselves, more than twice as likely to miss the next tutoring session.

“The Spillover Effects of Customer No-Shows: Field Evidence from an Online Education Platform” was released on SSRN in November. Authored by Professors Hengchen Dai (UCLA) and Dennis Zhang (Washington University in St. Louis), the study was intended to add to the research on customer and employee behavior in the service industry. But its findings also bear strong implications for the fields of education and education technology, and represent a perspective that often goes overlooked.

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