How Electronic Conferencing Affects the Way We Teach

Extrapolating from personal experience of on-line, electronic tutoring, the author outlines some of the challenges facing those both tutoring courses on-line and moderating student computer conferences. She uses these experiences to identify features of electronic conferencing systems that she as a tutor found particularly useful. She discusses the empowerment of students in an electronic environment; the importance of introductions at the start of a course or conference; the problems faced by non-native language speakers; and the need to ensure that individuals are not excluded by the language level of the conference. The problems of adhering to the programme, and the balancing opportunities that an electronic tutorial environment provides for students to pursue their own interests, is discussed. She contrasts these experiences with that of providing face-to-face and correspondence tutoring on a 'conventional' multimedia Open University course, and discusses in this connection the impact of the size of the group on the management of conferences, and how to tackle zero participation in a conference. Some of the approaches a tutor can take to elicit a response from students, to structure conferences, and to use the creative possibilities of 'weaving' are discussed. At the end she reflects on the time conferences take, compared with face-to-face tuition, the costs involved in on-line tutoring, and how one might evaluate one's own work as an on-line tutor.