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Case study 1: Online tools for tutorship in technical and scientific courses

15 一月, 2016 - 09:48

Tutorship is becoming a fundamental role in the context of educational virtual campus of our university, and in general in European Higher Education Space (EES) (Seoane-Pardo et al. 2007). We have a virtual campus and a strong institutional support for the development of high-quality virtual teaching-learning activities. However, in order to be successful, the consideration of human factors on the different on-line strategies is of great importance.

In our educational model, we perform “academic tutorship", which fosters the resolution of students’ doubts and questions and allows professors or tutors to monitor and track the evolution of their students and educational activities.

Firstly, we focus our attention on timing, because though the efficient time management and scheduling of the teaching-learning activities of students has not been studied in depth in our university, we firmly believe that it is an essential aspect in the new European Higher Education Space (EES) which we are converging to. In fact, we ask ourselves whether the use of ICT actually affects the workload of our students, and whether it increases/decreases the students’ workload. Therefore, we analyze the students’ workload and the time they invest in their study and training. Moreover, in our opinion, the influence of a proper student’s time management in her/his academic results and how a tutor can help students to organize their activities by means of tutorships should be also analyzed.

Regarding how to measure the students’ workload, the unanimous opinion in several forums of our university is that this work should be in charge of the coordinating teams of the different degrees which are institutionalized in our university. In fact, this challenge is being faced nowadays due to the introduction of the new degrees adapted to the European Higher Education Space. It is important to remark that it is easy to talk about perceptions about the relationships between scheduling, timetables, planning, timing, etc. and the use of ICT tools or methodologies. However, conclusions must not be established from only perceptions due to the relevance of this topic. In consequence, we need to quantify the workloads, and develop the methodology, indeed, the measurements can differ among the different areas or subjects.

At this point, we propose a reflection about the concept of timing in higher education spaces by considering timing as the ability to recognize and react immediately to changes and opportunities in the teaching-learning process. We could study how to choose momentum for changing or reacting; i.e., how to get a dynamic management of our teaching-learning activities. In this context, we could also reflect upon how to use methodologies such as “Just and Time" with ICT tools. Our conclusions are very diverse, but we agree on that the tutor’s role is crucial in this process.