Online Courses

How To Be An Online Tutor - An Interesting Read

This is an extract from a publication, How to Be an Online Tutor by Julia Duggleby, which is a most useful and readable guide to help tutors and trainers translate what they already do into an online environment, either by the conversion of existing online courses or by the creation of new ones. Assuming little in the way of technical expertise, the book is structured in five parts.

The first part deals with what online learning is, who wants it and why, while the second part consists of a useful tutor's guide to the Internet. Part Three starts with a discussion on planning the course, followed by a section on the content of the course (from which our extract is taken). This is followed by a helpful description of the Web as a resource. Part Four is concerned with getting the course up and running. Part Five consists of appendices which include case studies.

Once you have decided on your course's learning outcomes and assessment criteria, you then have the framework for your course. This chapter will help you build on that framework and fully develop an online course by considering the various elements that can be incorporated. Additionally, this chapter will explore the possibilities for online course content, raise some issues for you to ponder, and help you make decisions about the content of your course. As a starting-point look at examples of the elements of a face-to-face course and see what their online equivalent could be.

Do not make the mistake of simply rewriting your lecture notes into Web pages as this is a dreadful waste of the medium. You will need to think about how the Web site will be broken down into individual pages; how the navigation of the Web site will work; what the site will look like; what interactivity can be incorporated; how the site can be enhanced with multimedia; what activities the learners will do and how their work will be assessed; and how the course participants can develop group identity. The next chapter will consider some of the more technical aspects of Web design; this chapter will focus on the content from a pedagogical point of view.

In any course there is a core of knowledge that needs to be passed from the tutor to the learner. This core of knowledge will include such things as factual content, theory, methodology, issues and specialized vocabulary and concepts. This is an example from an Introduction to Social Science module.

In an ordinary classroom this knowledge is frequently transferred to the learners by the tutor, who will stand at the front giving information and explanations, writing and drawing on a board, doing demonstrations and giving out handouts. Thus one of the tasks in developing an online course is to identify what this core of knowledge is, and record and organize it so that it can be mounted on course Web pages.