The Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium has a collaborative e-tutoring program that sounds effective. They have partnered a whole slew of schools into a collaborative framework that allows students to utilize tutors from other campuses. The e-tutoring progam allows instructors to use a variety of synchronous and asynchronous tools to meet student needs.
They have a cost-sharing structure as well as assessments for quality and supposedly rigorous pedagogical evaluations of course content and instructor methods. They say their tutoring offerings as well as participating institutions have grown substantially since they started the project.
It ‘sounds’ like a good model with important ramifications for students seeking access to quality help. It would be interesting to see the results of surveys of participating instructors and students to see what they thought was useful or not about the tutoring.