Synchronous Online Tutors’ Workshop

Thursday, Sept. 4th, 5-7pm

CTDLC Offices, Newington, CT

Attendance:

Thomas Petersen MCC

Phani Papachristos SHU

Pam Berlekovic UCONN

Art Israel COSC

Joanne Cialfi CSU

Elma Solomon NVCC

Dawn Zaleta MxCC

Please be well acquainted with the following best practices and protocols:

Online Tutoring Best Practices

1)  Help Students Use the Technology:

i)  Attempt to instruct/assist the student yourself, i.e. - how to type on the whiteboard, or how to cut and paste a question from another window.

ii)  Direct the student to:

Smarthinking Tech Support Phone # (888) 430-7429 ext. 1. Their support staff is available to walk the student through the process of using the platform.

iii)  The student can contact support through email if they have specific questions:

iv)  Practice using the various functions yourself so you can be ready to assist the student. For example, you should be proficient using the following tools (if you need assistance learning how to use these, you too can contact Smarthinking support for assistance):

·  The cut and paste function

·  The screen capture function- to take areas directly off of web pages, excel spreadsheets, etc.

·  The graphing calculator

v)  Direct the student to “How to Use Whiteboard Functions” found under Customer Support & FAQ. Specific instructions for all of the whiteboards tools can be found here. The URL for this page is: http://wb.smarthinking.com/~sdk/SDK/wbd_manual/index.html The student needs to be logged onto the Smarthinking platform to access this page. (Tutors who would like to expand their use of the whiteboard’s tools might find this page of interest as well.)

vi)  Have all of this information saved to your desktop or on a disk for easy reference so you can simply cut and paste it into a student reply.

vii)  Respond to every submission, even it is blank. Provide encouragement and technical advice to help the student successfully obtain your assistance.

2)  Your ideas for Providing Effective Online Tutorials:

·  Use screen captures and cut and paste tools to make your responses more meaningful, more interesting (add information from the internet or your desktop directly to the whiteboard you are working on).

·  If you don’t know an answer to a question, don’t give up right away and say you don’t know. Attempt to research the question and share the information you find with the student. Remember the academic resources that are available through the platform to both you and the student. Familiarize yourself with these if you haven’t already.

·  Offer the student a strategy to answer the question rather than answering it for them. Give them the tools they need to solve a problem.

·  Encourage students to return for more help…invite them to use the Live Sessions if you are answering their offline questions. Encourage them to use the Search the Schedule option on their homepage so they can see when tutors are available.

·  Start each interaction with a student, whether live or offline, with a greeting. At the end of each question, thank students for using the program and encourage them to return. Again, refer them to the homepage and all of the options available to them for tutoring through the platform.

3)  Online Etiquette- Professor Peter Chepya, Teikyo Post University, has coined the term “e-personality” to describe the importance of the human element in delivering effective online learning tutorials. Bringing yourself to the online environment so that the student experiences you as a human being and not just numbers and words on a screen can greatly enhance their overall learning experience. Some suggestions to facilitate this are:

a)  Use encouragement

b)  Always ask/invite students to come back with more questions

c)  Encourage live sessions!

d)  Always reply as though the student’s question is very important

e)  Be personable. Effective email communication often requires that we pay special attention to conveying the human element within what can be, an impersonal environment. Do your best to make sure all of your responses have a human voice.

f)  Respond to every submission, even if it is blank. Provide encouragement and technical advice to help the student successfully obtain your assistance.

4)  Providing enough information within an offline question- how much is too much? How much is not enough?

a)  Avoid making assumptions about what a student’s knowledge is in a subject area. Your reply needs to be thorough enough for the student with limited knowledge to understand the information. Be as detailed as possible in your reply.

b)  Give more than one option for answering a question when several options exist.

c)  Use your own example problem, one that is similar to the student’s problem, but not the same, and go through the steps of solving it.

d)  Realize that offline questions often require more work than live sessions to respond effectively.

e)  Show the student some of the steps involved in solving a problem and let themhim/her complete the problem.

5)  Quality of Service- things to do to improve overall service delivery:

a)  Archive all live sessions- we have lost many sessions from our usage reports because they are not archived at the end of a tutor’s session. If you have had even the briefest live tutoring session, at the end of a scheduled session you must go to the post process icon on your tutoring page, click, and complete the post process. If you fail to do this there is no record of your work and the student does not receive a copy of the session in their archives.

b)  Create a Welcome Page- Post a picture, a saying, a welcome, etc., when you open your tutor session as a greeting to students who enter your tutorial. You can create this, save it in a document, and use the screen capture tool to insert it into the open whiteboard.

c)  Keep Your Correct Schedule Posted at all times. Students should be able to look ahead at least one week and see all available tutoring sessions.

d)  Do not answer any question for a student without her/his active participation in solving the problem. We assure all of our institutions that we do not do the students work for them at any time, but help them discover the solutions themselves.

CTDLC/Smartthinking Online Tutoring Procedures and Protocols

As we enter the fifth semester of this pilot program it is imperative that tutors continue to be active participants in the online tutoring program’s development. We are relying on your flexibility and your willingness to communicate with the program coordinator your ideas, issues and concerns, helping us to further develop and refine our systems. Your continued input will enable us to explore how we can work together in the best ways possible, facilitating the effective expansion of the program in subsequent semesters. The protocols below are designed to facilitate a smooth working system and effective tutoring processes:

  1. Pay- Tutors will be paid to work for a specified number of hours per week, as determined by the institution that hires the tutor. The institution sets the pay scale.
  1. Downtime- On occasion you may not have enough work to fill up your hours. We encourage you during this time to practice using the whiteboard.
  1. Scheduling to the Workload- We will continue to monitor the workload. We may discuss shifting schedules if we find that student usage warrants an adjustment.

4.  Once the schedule is set for the semester tutors should look out over the course of the entire semester to identify any conflicts. Plans for vacation, conferences, meetings, etc., should be made at the beginning of the semester whenever possible. Last minute changes are harder to find coverage for and end up leaving holes in the schedule.

5.  If a tutor can’t make a shift, he/she should contact other tutors and arrange to switch hours. It is the tutor’s responsibility and it needs to be done well ahead of time whenever possible. An institution beside your own cannot pay you for any hours worked. The only way to arrange a switch is to cover the same number of hours on the schedule of the tutor who is covering your schedule. If a switch is made the tutor should notify Carolyn. If a tutor is unable to find someone to switch, he/she should notify Carolyn and his/her contact at the institution.

  1. Holiday Coverage- We continue to provide tutoring over most holidays. If you are scheduled on a holiday please plan on tutoring unless you are advised otherwise. If you cannot tutor on a scheduled holiday, please follow the protocol above for covering your shift.

7.  Keep your posted schedules updated. Students are encouraged to search the schedule for available tutors. Each tutor’s schedule should reflect the hours they will be available several weeks in advance so students can plan accordingly.

  1. Tutor Support- Tutors are encouraged to contact each other to share ideas, ask questions, and support each other’s work. The program coordinator will provide a distribution list for this purpose. If you need this list please contact Carolyn at .

9.  No Email- No contact with the student is to happen via email. Do not ask for a student’s email address. If a student requests that you email them for any reason, explain that all of the answers to their tutoring questions can be found in the inbox on their homepage. If a problem arises that requires e-mail communication with a student (complaints, inappropriate questions, questions in other subjects, administrative questions about student accounts, etc.), they should communicate with the coordinator immediately and/or refer students to customer support ().

10.  Be on time for all of your sessions- We need to provide the service as advertised. Being available when we say we are available is good customer service. Also, we need to answer in a timely fashion. Complete a session once you open any whiteboard. Do not accept an offline question and then not reply for a day or two. We should do our best to come close to a 24 hour turn around. If you do not know the answer to a student’s question try and find some information so they can find the answer themselves.

  1. Thoroughness of response to offline questions- Be careful to be as complete and as interactive as possible. Try and anticipate the student’s needs. Be personable, encouraging, and enthusiastic. Students need more than the numbers on the page in order to learn, or to be excited about what they are learning! Effective online teaching requires that there be a human element to the interactions. While they are taking place at a distance and through the written word, approach each interaction with a student as though it were face-to-face.
  1. Technical Assistance- If the student is having any type of technical difficulty please refer them immediately to Smarthinking technical support- phone # (888) 430-7429 ext. 1 or . Do this if they are complaining of difficulty or if they are obviously having a problem, i.e. unable to type on the whiteboard, leaving empty offline questions. Provide extra encouragement to the student to try and master the system.
  1. If you are having technical difficulties- let me know, but also contact Smarthinking directly. They can walk you through any process or help you with any questions.

14.  Always post your whiteboard sessions at the end of your shift. This is how you document the work you have done. It is also how the student receives a copy of your work together in his or her inbox.

Coordination

Carolyn Rogers-Ward, Coordinator of Academic Student Services at the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium, is coordinating the tutoring project. If there are questions or concerns please contact her at or 860-832-3894.

Some notes for Tutors:

While we are not using all of Smarthinking’s services, we are using their model. Therefore I refer you to Academic Resources on your tutor page.

Professional requirements for Tutors:

·  Professional impartiality: Your position as a CTDLC/SMARTHINKING tutor is one of skilled impartiality. In your written responses, never make judgments about a teacher's assignments, pedagogy, character, or marking systems. Also, never criticize a student's home institution.

·  Confidentiality: CTDLC/SMARTHINKING strongly believes in protecting the privacy of its e-structors and students. As a result, we will never divulge any private information about our e-structors or students to any third parties. As an e-structor, you may have access to some personal information about the students you assist. For example, a student may self-disclose a learning or physical disability or write about sensitive family situations. You should never release any information about the students you support to anyone outside of CTDLC/SMARTHINKING. Additionally, you must never contact or offer to contact a student by email. Do not ask for a student's email address or other private information and do not give out your own email address or private information.

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