Informal Staff Development via a Centralised Tutoring System in an Online Lecturer Education Programme

Author(s):

Aileen McGuigan(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2012

Network:

22. Research in Higher Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

22 SES 01 C, Academic Work and Professional Development

Parallel Paper Session

Time:

2012-09-18

13:15-14:45

Room:

FFL - Aula 27

Chair:

Jani Petri Ursin

Contribution

This research is concerned with informal staff development on an online lecturer education programme at University of Dundee, the Teaching Qualification (Further Education) or TQ(FE). It pertains to thematic research field (3) Academic work and professional development.

In the academic year 2009 a new tutoring system was introduced onto the TQ(FE) programme; since then, instead of each tutor having a quota of students to support throughout their studies as personal tutor, all the students have access to all the tutors, who now undertake their tutoring on a rota basis. The new system comprises a blog, a microblog and a generic email account, all of which operate under the badge ‘TQFE-Tutor’. The primary reason behind the creation and implementation of TQFE-Tutor was the need to continue to provide high quality online tutoring to programme participants in the context of reduced staffing. However, once the new system was launched, it became apparent that there was another, unintended consequence: apparent benefits in terms of informal staff development. This research investigated that consequence.

The need for effective use of ICTs throughout educational sectors has long been recognised and is a recurring motif in European initiatives over the past decade. In the context of an online programme perhaps more than in some HE contexts, staff need to be conversant with technological developments; they embody the notion that ‘All… staff of higher education institutions should be equipped to respond to the changing demands of the fast evolving society’ (European Ministers responsible for Higher Education, 2009:2). Teaching staff on the TQ(FE) programme model practice which may subsequently be taken up for use by their lecturer participants in their own classrooms in the college sector; it is clearly important that there is appropriate provision for their own staff development.

Whilst the University has a professional development department, which provides generic training programmes for teaching staff, when it comes to professional development specifically required for the programmes within which tutoring is being undertaken, this falls within the remit of the programme team. Drawing on Boud’s (1999) recognition that much academic development is informal and takes place where the academics happen to be, Cornelius and Macdonald (2008) posited that in the case of online tutors this would be online and this is the case in the TQ(FE) context too; not all of the programme tutors are based on campus and the majority of the contact between team members takes place online. The TQFE-Tutor model differs from the Open University one explored by Cornelius and Macdonald, however, in the fact of the tutor function being centralised; the Open University used a personal tutor model, with 25 participants per part-time tutor. The current researcher noticed that the centralisation of the TQ(FE) tutor team appeared to offer a range of benefits in terms of peer support and informal staff development.

The research explored the following questions:

(1) How does TQFE-Tutor provide support and promote informal staff development?

(2) How could the centralised tutoring system provide more/better informal staff development opportunities?

Method

Framework analysis (Ritchie and Spencer, 1994) was selected as a methodology well-suited to this kind of research, where the questions are asked within a limited timeframe and with a predetermined sample (the TQ(FE) tutor team). A series of short semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of the TQ(FE) team. These were recorded and transcribed, denaturalized (Oliver et al, 2005). A thematic framework was devised and Nvivo software employed to index and chart the resulting data which was then interpreted and mapped. Finally recommendations were made, based upon this interpretation, reflecting the attitudes and values of the tutors (as had been expressed in the interviews). The research is from an ‘insider’ perspective: the author is the director of the programme upon which the research is based, is well aware of the somewhat precarious stance of the insider researcher and tried not to make assumptions based upon her knowledge of the programme and its participants. As far as possible, advice offered by Asselin (2003:100) was followed, to ‘“It is best for the [insider] researcher to assume he or she knows nothing about the phenomenon under study and start gathering data from a fresh perspective with his or her ‘eyes open.’”

Expected Outcomes

Programme tutors were highly positive in their feedback about TQFE-Tutor and the welcome unintended consequence of its promotion and support of informal staff development. Tutors remarked on the opportunities for peer learning which the new system provided. The centralised system affords all the tutors an overview of all of their colleagues’ tutoring, which tutors found useful and reassuring – much in the same way that tutors in other studies have reportedly advocated peer observation of teaching schemes (see for example, Bell and Mladenovic, 2008). TQ(FE) tutors remarked upon the usefulness of being easily able to see how other tutors frame advice for programme participants – and therefore learn from one another. This was found particularly valuable by new tutors. The use of social media tools such as the TQFE-Tutor blog, and other resources such as web conferencing tools, keeps the team up to date with a fast-evolving educational environment in which new tools – or innovative uses of existent ones – continually crop up. Tutors on the TQ(FE) have plenty of opportunities to ‘learn by doing’ whilst tutoring on the programme and reap a range of benefits from their collective online identity as TQFE-Tutor.

References

Asselin, M.E. (2003) Insider research: issues to consider when doing qualitative research in your own setting. Journal for nurses in staff development. 19(2):99-103 Bell, A. and Mladenovic, R. (2008) The benefits of peer observation of teaching for tutor development. Higher Education. 55(6): 735 - 752 Boud, D. (1999). Situating academic development in professional work: Using peer learning. International Journal for Academic Development. 4(1): 3–10 Cornelius, S. & Macdonald, J. (2008) Online informal professional development for distance tutors: experiences from The Open University in Scotland. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning. 23(1): 43-55 Council of the European Union (2011) Council Conclusions on the Modernisation of Higher Education. http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/educ/126375.pdf Accessed 12.12.11 European Commission - Education and Training (2012) Strategic Framework for Education and Training http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-policy/doc28_en.htm Accessed 12.12.11 European Ministers Responsible for Higher Education (2009) Communiqué of the Conference of European Ministers Responsible for Higher Education, Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve, 28-29 April 2009. http://www.enqa.eu/files/Leuven_Louvain-la-Neuve_Communique_April_2009.pdf Accessed 20.12.12 Jurasaite-Harbison, E. and Rex, L.A. (2010) School Cultures as Contexts for Informal Teacher Learning. Teaching and Teacher Education. 26(2):267-277 Oliver, D.G., Serovich, J.M. and Mason, T.L. (2005) Constraints and Opportunities with Interview Transcription: Towards Reflection in Qualitative Research. Soc Forces. 84(2): 1273–128 Richter, D., Kunter, M., Klusmann, U., Lüdke, O., Baumert, J. (2011) Professional development across the teaching career: Teachers’ uptake of formal and informal learning opportunities. Teaching and Teacher Education. 27: 116-126 Ritchie, J. & Spencer, L. (1994) Qualitative data analysis for applied policy research in A.Bryman and R. G. Burgess [eds.] Analyzing qualitative data. 1994:173-194

Author Information

Aileen McGuigan (presenting / submitting)

University of Dundee

Education

Dundee

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