DL@WeB- WP3 Meeting
Vrnjačka Banja, 22-23 januar 2013
General recommendations for organizing user
support in DL study programs
Valeri Caraguel
University Paul Cézanne
Milena Stanković
Univerzitet 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.
DL@WeB - WP3 Meeting, Vrnjačka Banja,
22-23 januar 2013.
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.
DL@WeB - WP3 Meeting, Vrnjačka Banja,
22-23 januar 2013.
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.
DL@WeB - WP3 Meeting, Vrnjačka Banja,
22-23 januar 2013.
TUTORING ENGINEERING
ANALYSIS / DEFINITION
DESIGN
DISSEMINATION
Analyzing students’
guidance needs
Designing and
quantifying the
tutoring
interventions
Training e-tutors and
implementing
communities of practice
Investigating domain of
learning support
Identifying roles and
functions of the
different e-tutors
Choosing the
communication
tools
Writing the tutoring
chart
Creating tools and
dashboard to coordinate
the tutoring system
Defining the economic
model for the tutoring
system
DELIVERY
DELIVERY
DELIVERY
Tutoring
System
Tutoring
Scenario
Dissemination
Plan
DL@WeB - WP3 Meeting, Vrnjačka Banja,
22-23 januar 2013.
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.
DL@WeB - WP3 Meeting, Vrnjačka Banja,
22-23 januar 2013.
E-tutor is in the center of the e-learning
system
Institution
Structure
Contents
(of the programme)
e-tutor
Group
Student
DL@WeB - WP3 Meeting, Vrnjačka Banja,
22-23 januar 2013.
Different modalities of intervention
Institution
Structure (of the
programme)
Contents
programme)
e-tutor
Personne
tutrice
Meetings for
collective sessions
Individual e-tutoring
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
Group
• 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
Peer to peer e-tutoring
DL@WeB - WP3 Meeting, Vrnjačka Banja,
22-23 januar 2013.
Student
Working in a team
Ideally, 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, trainingperiod, 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.
DL@WeB - WP3 Meeting, Vrnjačka Banja,
22-23 januar 2013.
Roles and competencies of e-tutors
Four main roles have been identified for the etutor:
• a pedagogical role with two levels – cognitive
and metacognitive,
• a socio-emotional role,
• a technological role,
• an organizational (or managerial) role.
DL@WeB - WP3 Meeting, Vrnjačka Banja,
22-23 januar 2013.
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:
Determinants of use
Student’s motivation
Availability of the technological
device
Use of technology
Time
Interaction with others
Atractivity of the course
Organization of students’
accompaniment
Tutor’s skills
Tutor’s role
Reactivity, proactivity
Socio-emotional
Reliability
Technological
Appropriation
Technological
Individual organization
Organizational
Different types of e-tutoring
Organizational
Mediatisation and interactivity
Design and implementation of etutoring system
DL@WeB - WP3 Meeting, Vrnjačka Banja,
22-23 januar 2013.
Pedagogical and
technological
Pedagogical
(metacognitive aspects)
and organizational
Competencies
Roles
Pedagogical
Skills
-
Cognitive level =
expert of the domain
-
-
Meta-cognitive level = cognitive strategies
Support
Make technology
transparent, clear
-
To know the learning processes
-
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
Socioemotional
Technological -
Organization
al (or
managerial)
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
-
Empathy, availability
Proactivity
Master technology
Make appropriate choices of tools
Create tutorials and handbooks
DL@WeB - WP3 Meeting, Vrnjačka Banja,
22-23 januar 2013.
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 etutoring. 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.
DL@WeB - WP3 Meeting, Vrnjačka Banja,
22-23 januar 2013.
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.
DL@WeB - WP3 Meeting, Vrnjačka Banja,
22-23 januar 2013.
Perspective
E-learning is …
-
Implementation
Instrumental,
behaviorist and
positivist
Relational,
connectionist and
constructivist
Collective and
socio-constructivist
… a transmission
…an exchange
… a negotiation of
sense
It is considered
that we can
transfer knowledge
“Just-in-time
pedagogy”
-
-
Standardization of
contents
Norms of
interoperability
Experience is a
source of
knowledge
“Help yourself
pedagogy”
-
-
Autonomy,
individualization,
tutoring
-
All communication
is a negotiation.
Social interaction
is the source of
knowledge
“Collective reuse”
-
Collaborative
environment
-
Social networks
Modelling of
pedagogical
activities
Table 1: E-learning in an epistemological perspective. (Caraguel 2012, inspired by Fallery, 2007)
DL@WeB - WP3 Meeting, Vrnjačka Banja,
22-23 januar 2013.
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.
DL@WeB - WP3 Meeting, Vrnjačka Banja,
22-23 januar 2013.
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.
DL@WeB - WP3 Meeting, Vrnjačka Banja,
22-23 januar 2013.