Student and tutor perceptions of effective tutoring in distance education

Abstract

Questionnaire responses of 457 students and 602 tutors were used to investigate conceptions of a ‘good tutor.’ In each case, factor analysis identified scales that reflected key constructs; cluster analysis identified subgroups with different patterns of scale scores; and discriminant analysis determined the scales that contributed the most to differences among the clusters. Both sets of data yielded conceptions of tutoring that were described as task‐oriented and student‐oriented, respectively. The students’ data yielded an additional, career‐oriented conception. The tutors’ data yielded two additional conceptions that were described as knowledge‐oriented and impersonal, respectively. The distribution of the tutors’ conceptions (but not that of the students’ conceptions) varied across different faculties, suggesting that tutors from different disciplines have different beliefs about effective tutoring. The study suggests that both tutors and students would benefit from having a better appreciation of the importance of support in facilitating learning.

Keywords:

• beliefs about tutoring
• conceptions of tutoring
• good tutoring

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Janet Macdonald and Pete Cannell for discussions that prompted this study and to Keith Trigwell for his comments on an earlier account of the findings. We are also grateful to Pete Russell and Mary Kirby in the Open University’s Student Services for identifying the tutors surveyed in this study, to Nick Haycox for identifying the samples of students for the questionnaire survey, and to his staff in the Open University’s Survey Office for preparing and distributing the questionnaires and processing the responses.