JORDAN OPPORTUNITY FOR VIRTUAL INNOVATIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING
E-Tutor Training All JOVITAL E-Tutors were from Jordanian institutions and were trained by the team at TU Dresden alongside TU Dresden E-Tutors. The Formal E-Tutor training took place over a two-week period, between the 3rd and 16th September 2019, at the TU Dresden campus in Dresden, Germany. E-Tutors could be from any subject area, but generally attracted students from Business, IT and engineering backgrounds. The JOVITAL project aimed to train at least 24 E-Tutors across the ve partner Jordanian Universities. A total of 27 students were ultimately trained, over-matching the anticipated target. Due to partners’ request, a further summer school training session was amticipated to train more E-Tutors but had to be cancelled later because of the limitations the COVID-19 pandemic placed on national and international travel. The overall impact of the pandemic will be discussed later in this report. The multifaceted E-Tutor training equipped the students to become familiar with and to facilitate knowledge building and exchange in a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). In addition, the training taught the E-Tutors how to motivate individual students and groups for proactive participation and contribution, to observe and evaluate online collaboration and teamwork within the VLE and to recognize con ict situations and when intervene to solve group problems. Qualitative interview feedback from the E-Tutor training highlighted four key themes: • • • •
Soft skill development Intercultural competency development E- Tutoring as a privilege infrastructure and resources
Each is brie y explained below:
Soft skill development The E-Tutors overwhelmingly shared how they found that the development and practical application of soft skills was highly bene cial during their training. The E-Tutors expressed that they previously saw soft skills as ‘pointless’ as they were not relevant to subject-level learning, but their application in a live environment within the VCL bought their relevance and importance to the forefront. Communication and problem solving were the two main critical skills identi ed.
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