Abstract

JORGE, Idalina. Um questionário sobre as perceções dos estudantes acerca da importância das tarefas da e-tutoria: diferenças de género, idade, formação académica e experiência tecnológica. Educ. Form. Tecnol. [online]. 2012, vol.05, n.01, pp.17-32. ISSN 1646-933X.

The e-tutor´s tasks are well identified and categorized and there is consensus on the proposed taxonomies. However, there is no clear idea of what tutor's tasks are most valued by the students. This knowledge can contribute to a reflection on what we do as e-tutors and enlighten our common practices. Tutors often use asynchronous communication tools such as forums, to develop activities that involve collaborative knowledge construction and collaborative critical reflection, but the way students perceive the value of their tasks in the forum is quite diverse and the controversy usually revolves around how the tutors design and organize, facilitate discourse, act as content experts and evaluate students’ contributions. In order to understand what e-tutoring tasks in the forum the students consider the most relevant and helpful a survey with 25 items covering the three dimensions of teaching presence - design and organization, discourse facilitation, and direct instruction, including e-tutoring evaluation was constructed. It was sent via email between 2005 and 2011 to 900 students and professionals attending distance learning courses and 368 complete answers were returned. Conclusions are: 1) the relevance of the discussion topics posts, 2) students’ evaluation, 3) establishing rules for participation, 4) assessing the whole debate according to the course goals and 5) answering the students’ questions, are the tutors’ tasks at the forum that students value most. The results allow us to draw some conclusions about how the tutors should organize and intervene in the online forum.

Keywords : Feedback; Higher Education; Online Tutoring; Online Education; Online Learning.

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