26th Novembe 2008

Looking through the site you asked us to spend time in.

I find myself wanting to ask you how do you find the role of Online Tutor? Do you find it as lonely as we do? Do you find communicating with us the same as your classroom students? Or do you feel the same as Robin Mason in his quote below:

"In my view, too much is made of training tutors and this makes online tutoring seem more difficult and more unknown than it really is. The components of learning to tutor online are:

• familiarity with the conferencing software and how to get online
• comfortableness with the process of interacting online
• knowledge of what the particular online course requires of the student

The rest is commonsense and intelligent transferring of the art and skill of teaching to the online environment. Ultimately there is no substitute for getting online and experiencing a range of ways of interacting online."

http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/InfoKits/effective-use-of-VLEs

Basically, what I think he is saying is:

• The tutor needs to know how to get online and know how to use the environment he is teaching in.
• The tutor know how to interact online.
• The tutor needs pass onto the student course material and information for that student to achieve the learning outcomes.

So in the style of a reductionist.

Get Online --- Interact Online ----- Teach the students what they need to know.

This makes me feel a lot more comfortable. It allows me to focus my attention back on the art and skill of teaching. Using my emotion and enthusiasm to communicate in a stimulating and enriching, human way in an environment that is clearly not human.

I think that the Online teacher has an uphill struggle to inject these attributes into the partially sense deprived environment. A human has five senses and a range of emotional senses and I know that the Internet cannot support all of them.

Where a traditional classroom succeeds is in providing a learning space that students have the ability to speak with everyone around them, sychronised and instantly, even though it is a teacher controlled environment. A subtle nod or raised eyebrows speak volumes in a boring class.

How can I create a stimulating human experience through the CMC with the limited way when all I have is a limited means of adding emotion into my interaction? :-(