Dynamic management of tutors' roles in an online learning system

Abstract

In online learning environments, the tutor's role is essential. The tutor has several roles and consequently has several functions according to the context and the target community. In existing learning systems, these roles are fixed once and for all and sometimes are not explicitly defined. This makes pedagogical tasks very difficult as well as the tutor's social support for learners. To overcome these problems, an online system for learning and tutoring called LETline is implemented. In this system, the tutor's roles and tasks are dynamic and depend on tutor's skills. Learners' assistance requests can be easily expressed through semi-structured interfaces made for this purpose. They are related to each tutor's role as well as to the task or the corresponding function. Moreover, the tutor's interventions traces, as well as those of learners, are saved in order to be visualised thereafter.