Personal Tutor Websites

Internet teaching is a convenient term for what is defined here as teaching in the internet environment. It is therefore, an alternative to classroom teaching and textbook teaching. It is associated with e-learning, or online learning depending on your preferred terminology, and typically involves the use of online forums, audio-visual software, learning objects, blogs, wikis and other web 2.0 technologies. However, these are only online components rather than complete environments so the present discussion is about the use of Personal Tutor Websites for teaching and learning.

So, Personal Tutor Websites (PTW) are teaching environments that are entirely owned and managed by tutors. They may be hosted on an institutional virtual learning environment (VLE) or on a commercial web host. In either case they represent the interface between tutor and learner and a bottom-up alternative to the top-down online presence of the college website and its component course websites. They introduce a personal element into online learning that is missing from many distance and online learning courses and they assign more responsibility to the tutor for the actual teaching.

As complete teaching/learning environments, tutor websites can incorporate any of the e-learning technologies mentioned above. They may contain their own forums, audio and visual components, learning objects and blogs, or links to them on other sites. They can also integrate these into a single coherent presentation as, of course, can a course website. However, the personal teaching website has a number of advantages and, it must be admitted, a single disadvantage.

Disadvantage

To deal with the bad news first, the disadvantage is that most tutors do not have the technical expertise required to set up and maintain a website. Also, they may not have the time or motivation to take on what is usually an additional workload. The first of these you can get from various sources, including Webtutor or your college IT department. The others are issues you will have to deal with by yourself – but the following discussion may be persuasive.

Advantages

The advantages of a Personal Tutor Website are yet to be fully tested but it is likely that they will include the following points:-

• The tutor has a much better and more intimate relationship with the learners than the course team or the institution. He or she is better able to anticipate and respond to their needs.

• For online learning, the website is the only way to contain all teacher-learner interactions in the same controlled space.

• A personally managed website can adapt more quickly to changing circumstances than an institutional one since the tutor is the sole authority on its content.

• Content, such as audio files and video clips are nowadays relatively easy to produce by a tutor and in the tutor website they can be personalised.

• Links to external materials, references and other resources can be managed in real time to adapt flexibly to the learning process.

• It can have a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) feature that would provide an organic customised help facility.

• It can have a file upload feature to allow students to submit pictures and graphic examples of their work as well as their summative coursework.

• It can have components utilising novel technologies with which the tutor may be familiar, such as text messaging to mobile phones and compatibility with mobile browsers.

• It can have links to meeting environments such as Elluminate and Second Life for real time interactions with the tutor.

• It can host online tutorials using any of the technologies mentioned above as well as Java and Flash learning objects.   

In many respects these advantages provide a better learning environment than the traditional classroom and books. Moreover, if distance and online learning are to be fully embraced, as seem increasingly likely, then some sort of internet tutor presence will be required to complete the teaching/learning experience. Hence the conclusion that the medium is worthy of some study.

All that is required to start experimenting with the concept is to get your own PTW. And you can also have a look at an example PTW.