As parents get settled into the routine of homeschooling in the wake of school closures due to the novel coronavirus, many are discovering ways in which they and their children need extra help. A number of platforms offer free online tutoring and other resources, some of which have always been free and others that are offering extended free periods.

But sifting through them all can be difficult. Here's what some parents and education experts say about finding the best free online tutoring resources for students.

Public Libraries

The Princeton Review-owned Tutor.com typically offers a free introductory session and then a tiered pricing system depending on how frequently a student needs to connect directly with one of the platform's one-on-one tutors. But for patrons of the Los Angeles Public Library and more than 2,200 other libraries across North America that have partnered with Tutor.com, individual tutoring sessions are available for free as a regular, ongoing service.

The platform serves learners from kindergarten to adulthood in test prep and subjects such as math, languages and social studies. Tutors are primarily based in the U.S., with some in Canada.

And an increasing number of people are taking advantage of this service as schools are shut down across the country due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Oakland Public Library in California is among the community library systems across the country that have adopted the platform since the coronavirus hit, making it available to library patrons for free since April 1.

"It's a great resource because it offers free live one-to-one homework help for students," Mahasin Aleem, the children's collection manager at the library, says. "It takes about a minute to connect with a live tutor in a multiple of subjects, and we offer unlimited sessions. They typically last less than an hour, but there's no official cap."

"Math standards are different than they were when parents today were kids," Aleem adds, "and it's a great way to get some help if you've got students doing math in maybe a way you're not used to."

Although it's too soon for the Oakland Public Library to gather its monthly statistics on how many people are using Tutor.com, Sandi White, vice president and general manager at Tutor.com, says the company has seen a 28% increase in usage between April 1-10 over the same period last year.

Library patrons can access Tutor.com through their local library's website. Other libraries are also partnering with online tutoring programs such as Brainfuse, including the The New York Public Library and the Baldwin Public Library in Birmingham, Michigan.

Some public library systems, including the Miami-Dade Public Library, are offering free virtual tutoring from certified teachers.

White says that corporate partners are also increasingly offering the platform to their employees during telework and homeschooling periods.

More Tutoring and Homework Sites

If libraries and schools aren't offering enough free online tutoring resources or those that are best for an individual student's learning needs, there are many others from which to choose.

For instance, HippoCampus offers thousands of free online tutoring videos for students from middle school to college; SmartTutor offers free math and reading lessons; and Big History Project draws connections to the past and the present through yearlong and semester-length learning projects in social studies and world history.

Ask Teachers

Parents who are homeschooling while teleworking, working in essential professions or job searching are not expected to also be experts in online educational tools. Much of the advice about free online tutoring resources that will be most relevant to a student's learning level will come directly from his or her school or teachers.

Now that schools have had a minute to cope with the immediate chaos of shutting down and shifting to online teaching, many are also adding resources to give students more support.

"Students have a range of learning styles and learning needs," says Bita Nazarian, executive director of 826 Valencia, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that helps under-resourced students between the ages of 6 and 18 learn literacy skills. "A lot of teachers are doing individual outreach to every single family."

826 Valencia's umbrella organization, 826 National, also offers a full suite of free resources for teachers and students to help with their reading comprehension and literacy skills at 826 Digital.

While some students are struggling with not being in their classrooms, they might find having the one-on-one attention of a tutor, even an online one, just the thing they need to finally understand something that they might have been too shy to ask about in a crowded classroom with many other students.