All users of the community forum, no matter if they are tutors or students, can engage in private messages with each other. If a certain student has never opened the community forum before, however, this won’t work.
A student can message a tutor by clicking on the tutor’s name and then choosing “Message”. This opens a thread-like message that is like a private post.
We don’t expect tutors to engage privately with students for several reasons. Among other things, to maintain their privacy, security and because we don’t expect tutors to arrange lessons outside of the hours they add to their schedule (unless they want to).
If you find it very important to message or be available for certain, regular students you can make them aware of the messaging function described above. However, we generally advise keeping communications in the forum public or to send messages via Chatterbug staff (yellow chatbox).