An online tutorial should be the core of the student learning support services in the digital era to maintain the quality of distanced higher education. However, in Universitas Terbuka with supposed to be the cyber university of Indonesia, the participation in the online tutorials was still not encouraging. For example, the average of the percentage of students' involvement in the first academic semester of 2017 to the 2nd semester 2018 for one course was 2.21%. This study aimed to identify barriers for students to participate in the online tutorial. The method consisted of two stages. First, analyzing qualitative data that were gathered through open-ended questions to identify factors of the barriers. Second, developing 20 items' questionnaire based on the factors identified in the first stage and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM). The study involved 76 students in the first stage and 237 students in the second. The results of the study revealed that the students' barriers to online tutorial reflected in four factors, i.e. (1) information, (2) motivation, (3) technical, and (4) supports; each factor confirmed significantly (p-values < 0.05) with t-values equal to 14.108, 27.875, 7.502, and 25.640, respectively. The study proposed some recommendations to improve student participation in online tutorials.