DL@WeB - WP3 Meeting Vrnja čka Banja , 22 - 23 januar 201 3

DL@WeB- WP3 MeetingVrnjačka Banja, 22-23 januar 2013

General recommendations for organizing user support in DL study programs

Valeri CaraguelUniversity Paul Cézanne

Milena StankovićUniverzitet u Nišu, Elektronski fakultet

DL@WeB - WP3 Meeting, Vrnjačka Banja, 22-23 januar 2013.

Who is the e-tutor?

• E-learning should not mean learning alone. Some activities can be designed to be carried out on one’s own. Guidance is needed.

• Various names: mentor, guide, instructor, facilitator, coach, moderator, and leader.

• It seems that e-tutor can cover all of these meanings: – She/he is the person guiding the student all along her/his

learning process; – She/he is also the closest person to the student;– Besides being an expert, the tutor is a professional in

accompaniment and guidance.


Why would you organize e-tutoring?

• Both in blended-learning and in e-learning programs, e-tutoring is necessary to prevent lack of motivation, feeling of isolation and desertion.

• E-tutoring is team work. It needs a rigorous organization, listening competencies, empathy, reactivity and proactivity capabilities.

• Flexibility is also needed to meet the students’ constraints, level of familiarity with ICT and distance learning.

• Individualization of interventions is one of the most important key factors of success.


Towards the implementation of a tutoring system

• Analyzing learners’ needs in terms of help• Define fields of support in learning to investigate• Identify the roles and functions of the various tutors• Design and quantify the tutoring interventions• Choose the tools to communicate• Write a tutoring chart (relating the rights and the duties

of both students and tutors in the tutoring relationship)• Train the tutors and implement communities of practice• Create tools to follow the tutoring relationship.



DELIVERY

Dissemination Plan

DELIVERY

Tutoring Scenario

DELIVERY

Tutoring System

TUTORING ENGINEERING

ANALYSIS / DEFINITION

Analyzing students’ guidance needs

Investigating domain of learning support

Identifying roles and functions of the

different e-tutors

DESIGN

Designing and quantifying the

tutoring interventions

Choosing the communication

tools

Writing the tutoring chart

DISSEMINATION

Training e-tutors and implementing

communities of practice

Creating tools and dashboard to coordinate

the tutoring system

Defining the economic model for the tutoring

system


The objective of a tutoring system

The first objective of a tutoring system is to identify the different actors and their scope of actions.– The course tutor: interface between the learners

and the learning resources,– The coordinator: mediator between the e-tutors,

the group of learners and the institution,– The administrative tutor: in charge of the student

along her/his “administrative life”,– The technical tutor: in charge of the appropriation of

technology by learners.


E-tutor is in the center of the e-learning system

Structure (of the programme)

Institution

Group

Contents

Student

e-tutor


Different modalities of intervention

Personne tutrice

Meetings for collective sessions

Structure (of the programme)

Institution

Group

Contents

programme)

Student

e-tutor

Individual e-tutoring • Meet and guide the student • Guide the student through his/her

learning process • Support to reveal his/her abilities,

potentialities and preferences • Help to change

Collective e-tutoring • Represents the institution in front of

the students (belongs to a community, control and assessment)

• The structure enables him to : • Implement the learning strategy • Give stability and continuity in the

learning process

Peer to peer e-tutoring


Working in a teamIdeally, we should find:• a course tutor : can be author of the contents or just a specialist in the

domain• a “project” tutor: to guide the students through their project, training-

period, thesis (depending on the curriculum)• a coordinator (responsible for the curriculum): to coordinate all the

different actions of the e-tutoring system• a technical tutor: to facilitate the use of the tools and design tutorials• an administrative tutor: for all the administrative processes (appliance,

finance, certificate, organization of the exams, time-table,…) • a peer-tutor: a former student of a curriculum who helps others.

The composition of the team will depend on the number of courses, the policies of the institution, and will be reduced taking into account the different parameters.


Roles and competencies of e-tutors

Four main roles have been identified for the e-tutor: • a pedagogical role with two levels – cognitive

and metacognitive, • a socio-emotional role, • a technological role, • an organizational (or managerial) role.


Determinants of use Tutor’s skills Tutor’s role

Student’s motivation Reactivity, proactivity Socio-emotional

Availability of the technological device

Reliability Technological

Use of technology Appropriation Technological

Time Individual organization Organizational

Interaction with others Different types of e-tutoring Organizational

Atractivity of the course Mediatisation and interactivity Pedagogical and technological

Organization of students’ accompaniment

Design and implementation of e-tutoring system

Pedagogical (metacognitive aspects)

and organizational

Considering a research synthesis on TAM model researches (Ayadi-Kammoun, 2009) showing seven determinants of the use of an e-learning system by students, we are able to spot these four roles:


Competencies Roles Skills

Pedagogical - Cognitive level = expert of the domain

- To be able to transfer knowledge- To be able to construct an individual training

curriculum- To be able to tell if a goal has been reached

- Meta-cognitive level = cognitive strategies

- To know the learning processes

Socio-emotional

- Support - Empathy, availability- Proactivity

Technological - Make technology transparent, clear

- Master technology- Make appropriate choices of tools- Create tutorials and handbooks

Organizational (or managerial)

- Concerning activities - Be dynamic, reactive, proactive

- Concerning learning engineering and management of the project

- To be able to implement the logistic backup- To be able to monitor the activities and follow

the group of students- To have relational skills


What does it depend on?Institutional choices• E-tutoring depends on the environment and the political choices of the e-learning

curriculum. If you have no budget for e-tutoring, you need to re-engineer your contents to enable students to learn completely by themselves.

• Usually, an e-tutor should be in charge of around 30 learners online. The number of learners to look after will have an influence on the level of quality of your e-tutoring. This is typically an institutional choice. For example:

• Open University UK = 1 tutor for 25 students• Chinese Televisual University = 1 tutor for 70 students• Indira Ghandi National Open University = 1 tutor for several hundred

students

Tools and e-learning platform• The tools and the platform supporting e-learning device are very

important. They will design the user DL support.


What does it depend on?The level of storyboarding of the courses• The more precise your storyboard is, the less e-tutoring you need.

The learning models implemented• The level and the style of guidance will depend on the learning models

implemented. In the array above (table 1), you have an overview of implementation depending on the knowledge you want to transfer or the construction of knowledge you want to create.

• In a behaviorist perspective, you will teach course in which automatism will be learnt, or a succession of simple actions. Behaviorism does not facilitate critical thoughts, or develop comprehension.

• Constructivism will be used for problem solving, simulation. Here knowledge is constructed in doing: “Learning by doing” perspective.

• Social learning (bandura) and situated learning (Lave and Wenger) are two perspectives dealing with social interactions and interpersonal relationships. Nowadays, they will typically be supported by social networks tools.


Perspective

Instrumental, behaviorist and positivist

Relational, connectionist and constructivist

Collective and socio-constructivist

E-learning is … … a transmission

- It is considered that we can transfer knowledge

…an exchange

- Experience is a source of knowledge

… a negotiation of sense

- All communication is a negotiation. Social interaction is the source of knowledge

Implementation “Just-in-time pedagogy”

- Standardization of contents

- Norms of interoperability

“Help yourself pedagogy”

- Autonomy, individualization, tutoring

- Modelling of pedagogical activities

“Collective reuse”

- Collaborative environment

- Social networks

Table 1: E-learning in an epistemological perspective. (Caraguel 2012, inspired by Fallery, 2007)


Synthesis

• E-tutoring is not an element to elaborate after the whole e-learning device has been implemented.

• It must be part of the initial conceptualization on the device. Political choices, as well as pedagogical and technological ones are, all together, the elements that will permit to follow and support the students in their e-studies.

• The implementation of the e-tutoring system is one important quality factor for e-learning programs.


To go further:

• Salmon, G. (2000), E-Moderating. The Key to Teaching and Learning Online, Kogan Page, London.

• Salmon, G. (2003), E-tivities. The Key to Active Online Learning, RoutledgeFalmer, London.

• Smith, P., Dillon, C. (1999), “Comparing distance learning and classroom learning: Conceptual considerations”, The American Journal of Distance Education, Volume 13, N° 2 (1999).

• Sulčič, V., Sulčič, A. (2007), « Can Online Tutors Improve the Quality of E-Learning? », Informing Science and Information Technology, Volume 4, 2007.

• Webster, J., Hackley, P. (1997), “Teaching Effectiveness in Technology-Mediated Distance Learning “, The Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 40, No. 6 (Dec., 1997), pp. 1282-1309.

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