ABSTRACT
This workshop is designed to give conference participants a genuine experience of the challenges facing the developing e-tutor.
The motivation for the workshop is our wish to share with others working in the field some of the experiences we have had in developing capable e-tutors for a single-company accredited learning programme delivered in partnership with a University business school.
The workshop develops a number of the conference’s themes including e-learning, e-tutoring; the e-university; the experience of the developing e-tutor as both student and tutor simultaneously; the development of our blended learning approach, migrating from face-to-face to networked learning; the drivers placing networked learning at the top of the professional and lifelong education agenda for the management development facilitator; the particular challenges of networked management learning. However, the theme that has most resonance for us is working across boundaries.
The experience that we will share has taken us across multiple boundaries. Between universities and industry clients, as our action learning approach is designed to provide better transfer of learning to the workplace than many conventional academic learning models can provide. Between universities and external lecturers. Between those with a strongly behavioural approach to management development and those who are more interested in technology. It is in transcending these boundaries that we feel we have a special contribution to make. All of these themes are ones that others are writing about, but we are dealing with in our practice from day to day.
Our ‘e-enabled tutor’ programme is a modular, experiential learning programme with the following explicitly stated objectives: understanding techniques and tools associated with electronically enabled learning; gaining confidence in transferring good tutoring practice to electronically enabled media; developing skills alongside other top notch management development specialists; addressing issues to do with learning design and ‘humanising’ the technology used by learners.
The workshop aims to recreate in microcosm the experience of participants in our ‘e-enabled tutor’ programme. Workshop participants will be actively involved in some of the learning activities we have developed and will experience with us some of the fun, the challenges and the rewards. There will be time for discussion of the experience and we hope that we will gain much from this in terms of feedback about the wider applicability of our approach.
Delegates will have an opportunity to experience for themselves how, in our online tutor development and our work with university and corporate clients, we have been working to address participants’ needs for the little rituals that support them when dealing with challenging new material – like talking through the implications of new concepts over tea and biscuits. In a virtual meeting, everyone can get the Jammie Dodger[1].
KEYWORDS
Online, tutor, facilitator, management, development
Type of circular sandwich biscuit with red jam filling, manufactured by Burtons . Often found in mixed biscuit selections, the Jammie Dodger is particularly highly prized, both by management development programme participants in the UK and by British ex-patriots around the globe.