E-Tutor Training

JORDAN OPPORTUNITY FOR VIRTUAL INNOVATIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING

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 five 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 conflict 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 briefly explained below:

Soft skill development

The E-Tutors overwhelmingly shared how they found that the development and practical application of soft skills was highly beneficial 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 identified.

JORDAN OPPORTUNITY FOR VIRTUAL INNOVATIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING

Intercultural competency development

Beyond the general soft skill development, intercultural competences were highlighted as a key output from the ETutor training. The E-Tutors expressed that they had not previously been familiar with the concept of intercultural learning, but experiencing an international, intercultural setting in Dresden highlighted the importance of developing intercultural competences in order to work successfully with people from a variety of cultures.

E- Tutoring as a privilege

The E-Tutors shared how they viewed their position as a privilege and a position that requires hard work and dedication. Although it was understood that they were not acting in the capacity of a professor/teacher or tutor, it was felt that the E-Tutor role was an important one, and one that is particularly valuable for their personal development and CV

Infrastructure and resources

E-Tutors shared how they viewed collaborative online learning and Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) as important but observed that the resources and infrastructure of many Jordanian universities would need to be improved before it could become commonplace teaching and learning in Jordan. In other words, the E-Tutors shared that how they viewed the use of VLEs as currently complementary to higher education teaching and learning practices, rather than an education practice which could become the norm in the immediate future.

Quotes from the E-Tutor training:

“There are soft skills courses at university which are pointless to do in person but learning these digitally in an active real environment is good. Subject learning takes place in class, but using virtual learning gives us something a bit more different”

“Everyone really enjoyed the training, but it was hard. There were so many barriers, cultural, language and skill to begin with. Intercultural communications with a new culture was a different experience. This was made harder by everyone being non-native English speakers all trying to talk English, even the Germans. We did the training in a respectful way as we knew that there would be challenges with difference. Everything was really new but this is good. We are pretty employability conscious and this would be a good experience for our CVs.”

“I feel privileged to have been part of the training. I learnt so much about my skills, and how culture is so important to consider. I knew that working with Europeans would be different, but I also learnt how diverse we are inside Jordan too … I look forward to working more in JOVITAL”