A number of years ago I was working with an organisation named ICUS which was based in Singapore. The company developed eLearning solutions for entities such as Nokia, Singapore Airlines, Visa and Shell. One aspect of the eLearning development was eTutoring or online coaching.
During that same period I was lecturing and tutoring part time at the National Institute of Education in Singapore as part of their eLearning Instructional Design Programme. There was a significant online component. In a subsequent post I shall share some of the observations made during that experience.
In the meantime I would like to share the urls of three web sites that deal with eTutoring methodologies that I referenced at that time. I believe that a number of the heuristics that apply to eTutoring also apply when establishing blogs, wikis and Second Life interactions with students. These three web sites deal with initiating, nurturing, maintaining and successfully concluding an online teaching and learning experience.
First of all, there is the Online Tutoring eBook established by Heriot-Watt University and The Robert Gordon University back in 2000. You may consider that dated but the advice therein in timeless and just as relevant today. It is well designed with the information neatly chunked. Case studies support the instruction.
Next there is the E-Tutoring Overview published by the Centre for Academic Practice and Educational Technology at the University of Warwick. it provides a straightforward overview of the curriculum and managements issues one should keep in mind when participating in an online teaching and learning discourse.
Richard Mobbs at the University of Leicester has also created a resource for eTutoring. The site looks at the roles, strategies and tools of eTutoring.
Each of these sites were created at a time before the coining of the term Web 2.0 however the rules of thumb and strategies set out in each can be applied just as effectively when managing a blogging project or engaging your students in a virtual field trip through Second Life. They would be particularly useful for a teacher getting to grips with an online teaching and learning environment for the first time.
