Excellent Tutors’ Tutoring Process Pattern in Online Education of EFLT

Yang Liu (杨柳)、Ye Ming (叶明)

（The Institute of Online Education, Beijing Foreign Studies University，100089）

Abstract: while the online education has become a new teaching mode, it is worth discussing that how the traditional English educator teach in this new teaching mode. At the very beginning of 2003, the learners of BeiwaiOnline vote in 23 Excellent Tutors of semester 2002 and make comments on them. We also send a questionnaire to these Excellent Tutors. How can these 23 out of more than 200 tutors be the Excellent Tutor? This paper will study the Excellent tutors’ tutoring process in the online education and the interaction between the online education and traditional education and probe into the tutors’ tutoring pattern in the online education based on the result of the study. 网络英语教育已成为一种新的教学方式，传统的英语教师如何在这一新型的教学方式下教学，值得我们探讨。北外网院于2003年初通过网上学生投票，评选出2002年度优秀教师23名。这23教师如何能从200多名教师中脱颖而出？本文通过学生对北外网院23名2002年度优秀教师的评估以及对这23名教师的问卷调查，对其在网络教学中的教学过程及网络英语教学与课堂英语教学的相互影响进行研究。并基于此研究结果，探讨网络英语教育中教师的教学模式。

Key words: quality control, tutor’s role, motivation, tutor-learner interaction

1. Introduction:

1.1 Background of the paper

Quality is the final assessment of every phase of every BeiwaiOnline process. Every tutor’s performance will be assessed against his/her job specifications. There were 23 tutors selected nation-wide as Excellent Tutors among 260 tutors last year.

1.2 Purpose

The purpose of this research note is to examine their teaching and monitoring process on online education, and find out why they become excellent tutors and whether there is a teaching pattern, which is worth spreading through the whole teaching system.

1.3 The roles BeiwaiOnline tutors play

In the campus education, someone who guides the students is always called a teacher. However, in the distance or Online education, he/she is called a tutor rather than a teacher. Tutor is not only a traditional sense of instructor in classroom, but also provides individualized service according to different learner needs. A competent and responsible tutor plays the following roles (Gu Yueguo, 2001):

¡ Assessor- assess what the learner can already do, what progress the learner is making, and what the learner is able to do after a period of learning

¡ Supervisor- supervise what the learner does before and after class

¡ Instructor-give instructions to what the learner does in class with the materials

¡ Teacher-teach the materials to the learner

¡ Manager- manage all t he resources and classroom activities to the best advantage

¡ Information provider – provide the information requested by the learner

¡ Friend – be friend of the learner

1.4 BeiwaiOnline tutor’s job description

Every tutor’s performance will be assessed each smeseter against their job specifications. Quality makes tutors in BeiwaiOnline different from some other online education providers. The job specifications of a tutor in BeiwaiOnline are as follows:

¡ A face-to-face tutorial every other week

¡ Learning process monitoring

¡ 2-hour question answering every week via telephone

¡ Question answering via email & other means

¡ Assignments marking & grading

¡ A tutorial before the final exam

There are five kinds of performance according to the standard criteria of Beijing Foreign Studies University: Excellent, good, acceptable, poor, very poor. Learners vote in the tutors from their local learning centers via the e-platform. And the headquarter staff collect the results and then send the feedback to different departments and finally balance and decide who are the excellent tutors of that semester. There were 23 tutors selected nation-wide as Excellent Tutors among 260 tutors last year.

II. Methods

2.1 Questionnaire design

We designed thirty questions on the questionnaire. It focuses on the following five aspects: motivation, time arrangement before the tutorial, interaction between learners and tutors, influences of the online teaching on the classroom teaching, and the reflections of the tutors.

2.2 Tutor’s background

We emailed the questionnaire to 23 tutors and got feedback from 12 of them within a week, accounting for 53%. So the survey is valid and useful. Tutors were informed that their answers to the questionnaire would be analyzed and studied. They were asked to fill in all the information according to their real workday. The percentage of those satisfied with the questionnaire is 91%.

Among these 12 tutors, 5 of them are associate professors, 4 are instructorsand 3 are assistants. 64% of them are above 30 years old. And 55% of them have at least 5 years of teaching experience in a college or a university. The average learner-attending rate of these tutors is 63%, which means that more than half of the learners attend their tutors’ course.

III. Results Analysis

3．1 Time-arrangement pattern

The top question in the questionnaire is how the tutors arrange their time before the tutorial. Do they prepare the lesson plan and the presentation the very day before the tutorial day or even worse, just have a quick look at the text before he/she rushes to class? We can find that 83% of the tutors’ weekly preparing time is above 5 hours, that is, at least 1 hour every workday.

Figure 1

Figure 2 shows how the tutors spent their time on one evening. 34 % of them were preparing their tutorials, 22% were reading the tutorial materials uploaded on the e-platform which are great helpful to our tutors’ preparation, 22% were searching and browsing online, and 11% were answering the questions and queries from their learners. It shows that 89% of them were doing tutorial-related work.

Figure 2

3．2 Motivation pattern

Figure 3

From figure 3, we can get the information that 11 out of 12 tutors chose online education with the aims of getting to know more about a new educational mode, improving their research skills and broadening their research field. Another main motivation is trying to taste a new teaching style.

3．3 Tutor-learner interaction pattern

Question answering thr ough E-mail

Question answering thro ugh telephone

The average amount of question answering per week.

1.below 5 2. 5-10 3.10-15 4.above 15

Figure 4

Figure 4 shows that most of tutors have 5-6 email and telephone question-answerings per week. This has strongly supported that those tutors have very good interaction with their learners. And moreover it proves that though our learners choose online education, they are not distanced. Their learning process has been monitored very well.

T-L Interaction channel of BeiwaiOnline

T-L interaction channel of traditional education

1.E-mail 2.telephone 3.face-to-face tutorial 4.message service of cell phone 5.through the teaching administration

Figure 5

Figure 5 shows how the tutors of online education contact with their learners compared to the campus education. On the communication in the campus, 11 tutors chose in-classroom communication as the main means between teachers and students and only 1 chose email as the communication means. In the campus education, teachers and students meet once or twice every week and communicate with each other within the very short time, and then they have to be waiting for the next class to continue the communication. In the online education, however, the ways of communication are varied. 10 of them chose email, 6 telephone, 3 face-to-face tutorial communication, 1 short message served by cell phone, and 1 admin staff.

From the above figure, we may conclude that excellent tutors did very well against their job specifications: “2-hour question answering every week via telephone” and “question answering via email & other means”. Thus, they provided a very good process monitoring over their learners.

3．4 Influences of Online education on the classroom teaching

After teaching in BeiwaiOline, those tutors have lots of feelings. All of them think that they benefit a lot from online education.

n It has offered more interesting materials relevant to my classroom teaching.

n It has helped to improve my awareness of my own role in English teaching from a pure lecturer to a tutor able to lead students to their self-control and self-management.

n It has enriched my teaching methods in using Internet and computers.

n It has shortened the gap between my students and me since I can use Internet so skillfully.

3．5 Comments on the exellent tutors from the learners

n Dedicated warm-hearted and considerate to the class. We can consult her outside the scheduled two hours.

n I am very satisfied with our tutor. She is very diligent. Her class is active. Her voice is sweet and clear. She is serious with our tasks and she always corrects our mistakes patiently.

IV. Conclusion

4.1 Excellent tutoring process graph

As a tutor in BeiwaiOnline, as I have mentioned at the beginning of the paper, he/she must fulfill all the job specifications successfully, so that he/she may be called a qualified tutor in online education. In online education, tutor’s main function is to monitor learner’s learning process. The monitoring mainly focuses on face-to-face tutorial, questions answering, assignment grading and timely feedback. Figure 6 shows how our excellent tutors fulfill their monitoring responsibility. 1 stands for whether they inform learners of their email address, work telephone, question answering time and post address. 2 stands for whether they are on duty during their 2-hour-question-answering time every week. 3 stands for whether they give learners feedback within two work days. 4 stands for whether they finish their face-to-face tutorial according to the tutorial schedule. 5 stands for whether they mark learner’s assignments and meet the requirements of Headquarter. From Figure 6, 95% of the tutors accomplish their work with our standards. This graph is worth spreading through our whole online education system.

Accomplished

Unaccomplished

Job specifications description

Figure 6

4.2 The shortcoming of excellent tutoring process

From Figure 6, we find that 2-hour question answering every week and feedback providing within two work days are the most difficult tasks for our tutors to fulfill. Most tutors have accustomed to the traditional classroom education and find it’s hard to change their roles in online education as a process monitor. It has to take them more time to convert their notion of traditional education into the online education, and more efforts have to be taken for the perception conversion.

Attachment

对优秀教师教学过程的一次调查问卷

填写说明：

1. 此次调查的所有数据评估时间段为2002年9月－12月

2. 所有问题均可多选。

3. 欢迎您在每项后填写自己的意见和建议。

4. 请如实填写下列数据。

被访问者姓名

年龄

学历

职称

高校从教时间

网院从教时间

辅导中心

授课层次

班级总人数

每次面授辅导课出勤平均数

学生学习状况的大致描述

教学过程时间安排

Timetable: 请在这里描述一下您一天的工作时间安排。以准备网络授课的那天为标准。如果记不太清楚了，就写“不详”。如果还有更多的描述，请在最后一栏添加。

上午8:00-10:00

上午10:00-12:00

中午1:00－2:00

下午2:00-4:00

下午4:00-6:00

晚上6:00-8:00

晚上8:00-10:00

更多

1 您是否在学期初向学生公布交流的渠道（电话答疑时间及号码、信函地址、电子邮件地址等）？

A 是

B 否

2 每周按时在电话答疑时间内值班？

A 是

B 否

3 对学生通过信函、电子邮件等渠道提出的问题在两个工作日内给予答复？

A 是

B 否

4 按面授辅导课的日程安排完成了面授辅导的任务？

A 是

B 否

5 按要求收取并评判作业？

A 是

B 否

6 是否积极参与“网上教师园地”各栏目的活动？

A 是

B 否

7 您2002年下半年的每周备课量有多长时间（网院的课程）

A 2小时以下

B 2-3小时

C 3-5小时

D 5小时以上

8 您2002年下半年的一个学期的每周上课量有多少个小时？

A 2小时

B 3小时

C 4小时

D 5小时

9 您2002年下半年批改北外网院学生作业平均每份多长时间?

A 2分钟以下

B 2-5分钟

C 5-10分钟

D 10分钟以上

参加网络教育动机

10 以下哪些是您参加网络教育的动机：

A 希望有更多的机会使用网络与计算机

B 接触新型教育模式，以便提高科研水平，拓展科研领域

C 有机会实践自己的科研成果

D 由于系或院领导的安排

E 可获得额外的收入

F 学校或院系鼓励参与

G 挑战自我的能力

H 尝试新的工作方式

I 有机会获得更多网络资源

J 希望接触多样的学生

K 提高自我的教学水平

其他

网络及计算机应用程度

11 您是否经常上网搜索资料？

A 从来没有

B 偶尔上网查看

C 经常上网查看资料

12 您每周的平均上网时间？

A 2小时以下

B 2-5小时

C 5-8小时

D 8小时以上

13