Roles and Competencies
Given the range of purposes and contexts for group online tutorial classes, suggesting generic roles and competencies for tutors is problematic. Shifts between 'sage on the stage', 'guide on the side' and 'friend to the end' will be required depending upon the nature and level of your student group. Something across all three stances may be called for when supporting adult life-long learners and continuing professional development (CPD) groups.
That said, the list below is drawn from work with a project group spanning three UK and two mainland Europe institutions, as part of a European Commission Framework 5 programme: E-Quality in E-Learning (EQUEL). Any one student class online may demand several, perhaps all, of these roles from their tutor:
Designer: sometimes of the whole course or course module, sometimes simply of the 'lesson' itself. Identifying and implementing the pedagogies, the teaching and learning activities and the tasks to be done by the learners.
Content facilitator/Resource provider: sometimes as subject expert, sometimes as interpreter and guide through the concepts for study as expressed in the course materials; identifying and locating, developing and producing further resources to provide 'just in case' or 'just in time' learning support for the development of course-related concepts and skills.
Metacognition facilitator: supporting reflection on learning activities and outcomes, study skills development: giving feedback, arguing, agreeing, challenging.
Process facilitator: supporting learning strategies, study skills, time management, helping the learners to help themselves.
Collaboration/communication facilitator: encouraging participation and showing ways of participating by example, engaging in a non-directive way to support good interaction between the learners to take the learning forward.
Advisor/counsellor: providing pastoral support, acting as doorway to institutional or local support systems.
Assessor (formative and summative): giving feedback on task achievement and performance, supporting assignment development, marking assignments, examining.
Technologist: guiding early users, fielding problems, being first-post support with technologies and tools for learning.
Manager/administrator: keeping records, setting calendars, booking spaces, general course management.
Researcher: the line between the reflective practitioner and the action researcher is often thin.
Co-learner: importantly, and often, the role of the tutor is not 'sage on the stage' or even 'guide on the side', but genuinely 'friend to the end' of the course, walking with the learner-participants and learning alongside them.
One aspect of your role will be common across the range of contexts: a primary purpose to support learning and to that end a small checklist of general features probably apply as well to the virtual as to the face-to-face environment:
a climate of acceptance and respect for one another across both similarities and differences in the group
openness of communication
listening being valued as much as talking
everyone taking responsibility for their own learning and for their own behaviour
the development of clear processes for making decisions
problems and conflicts being faced openly and constructively
clarity in the setting (and agreeing) of tasks and activities
everyone's contributions being acknowledged and valued.
Adapted from Stanford, 1990
See 'e-tutor readings' for a summary of papers that deal with issues directly related to different e-tutoring roles: learning, learner management, learner experience, tutor perspectives, teaching and learning contexts and e-tutoring experiences.
See 'practitioner enquiries' for summaries of the work of some of the foremost practitioners in CMC.
