Roles and Competencies of the e-Tutor
Brigitte Denis1, Philip Watland2,
Sébastien Pirotte1 and Nathalie Verday1
University of Liège1,
University of Lancaster2
b.denis@ulg.ac.be, p.watland@lancaster.ac.uk, SEB.Pirotte@ulg.ac.be, Nathalie.Verday@ulg.ac.be
This paper considers the roles and competencies of the e-tutor. A
literature review shows that different roles are assigned to the online tutors.
Definitions of these roles are presented and discussed. Afterwards, we present
eleven roles we consider important to manage the interactions between learners
and tutors in an e-learning environment and the competencies needed to support
these tutor’s roles. We conclude that to improve the quality of e-learning the
tutor’s interventions have to be adapted to a specific context and we propose
to train the e-tutors for these roles.
Tutor Roles, Tutor Competencies, E-learning, e-tutor.
Many writers see tutor support as being critical to the educational
process and the students learning experience.
Reasons for the importance of tutor support in a technology-mediated learning environment range from practical
reasons such as reduction of drop out rates, theoretical reasons such as
mitigating student isolation, and moral reasons such as the obligation to help
students succeed (see for example, Lentell, 2003; Simpson, 2002). As Bennett and Mash (2002) note, “To be an
effective online tutor, it is clearly not enough to know which buttons to press
in order to send an e-mail or which HTML coding is required to insert an image
on a web page” (p. 14).
What the preceding implies is the support provided by e-tutors requires
e-tutors to adopt several unique roles depending on, for example, the
epistemological framework and the tasks the learners have to manage (e.g.
individual or collaborative work). From a mere transmitter of knowledge, the
e-tutor becomes much more, a facilitator of learning. Further, to design and
animate an online environment, additional staff or roles may also be necessary
(Denis, 2003). From a literature review and practice analyses, this paper discusses
our view of what is necessary in terms of e-tutor competencies for specific
e-tutor roles. We propose a list of possible e-tutor’s roles on which the
members of the EQUEL Special Interest Group[1]
on “Contextualised Tutor’s Roles and Tutor Training” have agreed. We hope this
discussion will contribute to defining what could be the profession of
e-tutoring.
Our literature review shows that different terms such as online tutor,
online moderator, e-moderator, distance education tutor, e-tutor and
definitions are used to refer to the same or similar roles. Further some
competencies are described by several authors, however many of these scholars
emphasise only one or two aspects of these competencies.
Barker (2002) for example, provides the following list of roles of
e-tutors including “... ‘pastoral care’
of students in terms of advising them about careers and course choices, marking
student’s assignments and coursework and providing feedback on submitted
material” (p. 7). Barker also adds the roles of moderating conferences, acting
as mentors to less-experienced colleagues and doing quality control of other
e-tutors’ work.
Ryan et al (2000) suggest “The
main role of the online tutor is that of educational facilitator: to contribute
specialist knowledge and insight, focus the discussion on the critical points,
to ask questions and respond to student’s contributions, weave together
disparate comments and synthesize the points made to foster emerging themes”
(p.110). Ryan et al add that tutors also needs skills for nurturing online
collaboration, creating an atmosphere of openness, assuring all participants
their contributions are valued and welcome, building rapport within the group
to help members to explore ideas, different perspectives and to take ownership
of their learning.
Lentell (2003) notes, “Tutors facilitate and guide the learning of their
students so that the students gain knowledge and understanding. To achieve this, tutors develop and practice
a multitude of skills and strategies” (p. 67).
Lentell states the typical duties of a distance education tutor include
ensuring students have grounding in the subject and providing students with
academic support in the subject matter.
Further roles include assisting students in exploring the links between
different course modules and integrating work experience with academic
knowledge.
Simpson (2002) describes two broad areas of tutor support, academic and
non-academic: “The first is academic (or tutorial) support – which deals with
supporting students with the cognitive, intellectual and knowledge issues of
specific courses or sets of courses.
This will include, for example, developing general learning skills,
numeracy and literacy. The second is
non-academic or counselling support – the support of students in the affective
and organizational aspects of their studies.
Within each of these areas are sub-divisions” (p.7).
Simpson also argues that any theory of student support reflects various
ideas about counseling such as humanistic or person-centered, a Rogerian
model. Rogers (1951) argues for
student-centered teaching rather than being based on the assumption that ‘you
can’t trust the student’, which he says, teachers acting on this assumption will
see themselves as needing to “Supply motivation, information, organization of
the material, and must use examinations … at every turn to coerce the student
into the desired activates” (p.427).
Rogers advocates the approach that ‘You can trust the student’ and
acting on this assumption teachers will be more inclined to create a climate of
respect and acceptance which is accepting of the emotionalised situation of
educational or group experience and the tutor sees themselves as a member of a
learning group, rather than an authority.
The teacher will make learning resources available, relying on the basis
of continuing experience and recognizes that any course is a beginning and not
the end of learning. Lastly, relying
upon the students to assess their progress and having confidence in this
atmosphere, which they have helped create, a type of learning takes place,
which is personally meaningful and supports the self-development of the
individual as well as the subject knowledge. Rogers’ view seems to oppose a
trend that we hope will not continue in academic institutions, consumer
behaviour, and viewing the student as a ‘customer’.
We do not agree with some authors such as Duggleby’s (2000) view of the role of an e-tutor which
she states as: “If you think of your role as part teacher, part party host and
part sheepdog, then you will have more or less the right approach!” (p.
118). This seems to stretch the roles
and competencies of an e-tutor to the extremes!
Our view is learner centered and based on a socioconstructivist approach.
This means that the learner is active in building his/her knowledge. The
e-tutor is proactive: he/she intervenes to help the learners to manage the
learning resources and their interactions with their tutor and their peers.
In fact these interventions mainly depend on the educational principles
(e.g. constructivism, collaboration, isomorphism, …) and on the instructional
design of the e-learning environment (Leclercq & Denis, 1994). For
instance, some of them emphasise individual learning, other are based on
collaborative activities... In the first case, the roles are more focused on
methodological and content expertise support, sometimes on providing feedbacks
and assessment. Charlier (2000) defines three types of e-learning environments
related to the learning paradigm considered: transmission of knowledge,
building of individual knowledge and group collaboration to build new
knowledge. She associated particular e-tutors roles to each of these paradigms
(expert, mentor, group and student counsellor), considering the view of
learning, the roles devoted to the technological support, the evaluation, the
other learners and some learning conditions.
Whatever the considered situation, we think it is important the e-tutor
clarifies and communicates his/her roles to the students. This is a part of
what Jacquinot (2002) and Denis (2003) mean by “tutorat d’accueil”: first
contact, mutual presentations, definition of the objectives of the course,
learners motivation, precision of the exigence degree, of the timetable, etc. These interventions aim to suppress
isolation or to provide virtual presence cues. Jacquinot suggests other
roles related to cognitive and social dimensions, articulation between theory
and experience, assessment and management (at the institutional level).
Denis (2003) proposes that, referring his/her own context and
epistemological approach, the e-tutor decides how to intervene choosing among
seven types of roles: to support the starting activities, to solve technical problems,
to answer to content questions, to support methodology requirements (about
organisation, working methods, affective aspects, communication and
collaboration), to enhance a metacognition process, to assess student’s work
and to provide ‘pastoral care’.
Referring to the collaborative distance learning context of the
Learn-Nett campus, Daele & Docq (2002) emphasise four types of roles linked
to the management of a group defined by Berge (1995): a social one, an
organisational one, a pedagogical one and a technical one. They propose
different roles to support individual and group learning. The e-tutor helps
each student to define his/her own project, to articulate it to the group
project, to reflect on his/her distance collaborative process, to search for
resources, to organise synchronous interactions, to respect the guidelines and
the agenda, to structure the workgroup, etc. These roles are also developed by
Deschryver (2003) .
Lentell (2003) however provides an excellent summary stating, “Tutors
need to have knowledge and a broad conceptual understanding of their
field. They have to be effective
listeners and communicators, to be a coach, facilitator, mentor, supporter and
resource. They have to listen, to
shape, to give feedback, to motivate, to direct, to appreciate – broadly to be
developmental and problem solving.”(p. 74).
What this review highlights is also the contextualised nature of the
tutor’s roles, which lead us to use an approach, which looks at the roles and
competencies of the tutor from the perspective of the tutor’s interaction with
students.
From this review and practice analyses we selected and agreed on eleven
online e-tutor’s roles we considered relevant in either a full distance or
blended learning environment. First, we defined the e-tutor as someone who interacts directly with
learners to support their learning process when they are separated from the
tutor in time and place for some or all these direct interactions.
From this definition, we further made a distinction between Central Roles
(related to interaction) and Peripheral Roles (previous to or after these
interactions). In this we are in
agreement with Lentell (1994) in which she describes the importance of the
student-tutor relationship in comparison with other student support elements in
ODL. Referencing (Cowan, 1994), she
states: “Like Cowan, I too consider that important though all the services
offered in distance education are, however splendid the printed texts, and
however smooth the organisational system, and however refined the quality
measurement tools, it is the relationship between the tutor and the learner
that determines success or failure” (p. 50).
We feel it is important to also highlight the need to temper each of
these Central Roles with a libertarian and humanistic perspective and recognise
the students as unique individuals. We
agree with Evans (1994) who states, “A similar caution about generalising
arises from the myth of ‘the learner’.
The term has a generic ring about it, but in fact refers to a very wide
variety of people with different backgrounds and concerns even within an
institution” (p. 225, quoted in Robinson, 1995). Similarly Lentell (2003) notes, “Each student presents particular
challenges and thus the tutor-student dialogue has to focus on different things
accordingly – for instance understanding the course, lack of appropriate skills
required to demonstrate understanding, lack of presentational skills, etc.” (p.
67).
We also recognise that there will be disagreement with our categories of
roles and that there is considerable overlap in some roles. For example, Thorpe (2002) would see the
Peripheral Role of course designer move to a Central Role as she remarks when
discussing on-line courses where collaborative learning plays a major role.
“Where so much of the content of the course cannot be specified in advance
because it is the process and substance that takes place in the on-line
interactions, course design and learner support start to merge. Furthermore, since learner support is no
longer an add-on to a predefined course, but itself defines what the course
becomes, the old model of course design first, learner support second, should
be questioned and possibly reversed.
Only when we have decided what can be delivered through on-line
interaction, will we be in a position to design ‘content’ and create course
materials” (p. 106).
This situation is not new and is similar to that reported in Hardy (1992)
quoting Hodgson and Reynolds (1987) commenting on a part-time MA in Management
Learning programme Hodgson and Reynolds state, “The tutors were responsible for
the overall design of the programme, based on the shared principles that
individuals should take responsibility for their own learning and for helping
others in theirs” (p.327).
What this illustrates is some of the problems in generalising tutor
roles. In some cases it seems that
different titles refer to fundamentally the same role and in others the same
title involves quite different tasks.
In much the same was as Berge’s (1995) widely used classification of the
conditions necessary for successful on-line instruction which he categorised
into four areas: pedagogical, social, managerial, and technical we have used a
similar approach however our approach takes its starting point the tutor’s
interaction with students. This
categorisation as well shows that the e-tutor has a large range of roles (e.g.
social, technical, didactical, discipline expert, etc) each with the need to
develop different types of competencies such as pedagogical, technical,
communicational, interpersonal skills, and so on.
The Central Roles we see as linked to interaction between the e-tutor and
the learners are:
Peripheral Roles are:
Pedagogical and communicational competencies are very important to
support the learning process. They are both linked to several categories of the
e-tutor’s roles: metacognition facilitator, process facilitator,
advisor/counsellor and co-learner. These competencies are more or less those
required to be a trainer or a teacher. Nevertheless, to interact at a distance
is different than in face-to-face (teacher’s and learners pace, use of
electronic tools, …). That’s why the e-tutor has not only to animate and manage
groups of learners, but also has to advise them to use the didactical
resources, chats and forums, … Then, it is necessary that the e-tutor uses
correctly the tools available in the e-learning campus, not only to access to
its resources, but also to help the learners if they have some technical
problems and when the role of technical support has been attributed to the
tutor. Must the tutor be an expert in the domain? We think that to be a content
facilitator doesn’t mean automatically that the e-tutor is as expert as the
author of the course in the discipline. At least, he/she should be able to
understand the proposed contents and to provide relevant resources to the
learners.
Table 1 summarises the
matrix of competencies we see as needed to support these different e-tutors’
roles.
|
Table 1 – Roles and Competencies |
||||
|
Competencies Roles |
Pedagogical |
Communicational |
Discipline Expertise |
Technological |
|
Content facilitator |
|
|
X |
|
|
Metacognition facilitator |
X |
X |
|
|
|
Process facilitator |
X |
X |
|
X |
|
Advisor/counsellor |
X |
X |
|
X |
|
Assessor (formative and summative) |
X |
|
X |
|
|
Technologist |
|
|
|
X |
|
Resource provider |
|
|
X |
X |
|
Manager/administrator |
|
|
|
X |
|
Designer |
|
|
X |
X |
|
Co-learner |
X |
X |
|
|
|
Researcher |
X |
|
|
|
Clearly within each aspect of competencies, specific sub competencies can
also be identified (e.g. technological competencies can be related to ICT tools
use, to the resources production, the platform management, etc.). Further this
implies an awareness of which competencies may be required by an e-tutor to
complement their existing skill set. In our approach of e-tutor training, we
recommend, in the first instance, to consider the competencies supporting
interacting with the learner as a minimum requirement.
To conclude, the e-tutor has more than one role to play in an e-learning
environment, including perhaps all of the roles described in this paper. We
agree with Ryan et al (2000) and
Lentell (20003) and envision the roles of e-tutors and the training of e-tutors
will continue to change as technology-mediated learning environments continue to be more prevalent in academic
institutions (commercialisation), the shift to programs which encourage
learners to take greater control over their learning continues (pedagogy), the
technology used in these learning environments evolves (information and
communication technologies) and of course politics (funding, quality
assurance). Further these roles and competencies depend on the educational
context: learners, learning outcomes, subject matter, other course provision
resources, and so on. Of equal consideration are the e-tutor’s existing
competencies and any gaps in their competencies related to the roles they will
be required to fulfil. As suggested by Bennett and Marsh (2002) tutors are
being asked “to run before they can walk” and that “the majority of tutors new
to online teaching do not have the background of online learning experience
upon which to draw” (p.15).
Determining the required roles in adapting the tutors’ interventions to a
specific context and proposing e-tutors’ training for these roles we see as
improving the quality of e-learning. As Lentell (2003) notes “One can never be
confident predicting the future – but one can seek to shape it” (p. 75).
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[1] EQUEL SIG 4 on “Contextualised Tutor’s Roles and Tutor Training” associates researchers and professors of different European universities: Liège (B): Denis, B., Pirotte, S. and Verday, N.; Lancaster (UK): Watland, P., Glasgow (UK): McAteer, E. ; Sheffield (UK): Banks, S and the Karolinska Institue (SW): Fors, U. Coordinator is the Service de Technologie de l’ Education – CRIFA (B. Denis). This project is supported by the EU E-learning programme. The address of the EQUEL website is http://tecfaseed.unige.ch/equel/equel.php