Reading Price et al. (2007)

I’m a great believer in perception and preparation being vital to organization and execution of any task, the results from the research gathered in the paper from Price et al (2007) would lead us to believe that on-line tutoring is not as successful as f2f tuition as a means of interaction and support to the learner, although overall general satisfaction results are not to dissimilar, obviously there are pros and cons of both forms of facilitation in my opinion depending upon the needs and attributes and to an extent the social skills of the learner. Sometimes our experience as learners from a young age has taught us that the typical classroom scenario is a place where we learn, this impregnated experience is sometimes hard to shake (even during post graduate learning) and can in my opinion lead to a very different styled learning experience, sometimes this can be positive or negative depending on previous experiences of the learner. My question is, are these classroom experiences taken into account as being an influence on the results? Perhaps this is why Price et al concludes with the call for more research on this topic, certainly as teaching seems to be heading (pushed) into this direction this would seem to be prudent.

1. Do you agree with Price et al. that online tuition is a pastoral activity and not a purely academic activity? Isn't any sort of tuition pastoral to some extent?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder as they say! This is to me very old-fashioned approach to take and I feel that learning in itself is (and has been rapidly over the last 20 years) changing rapidly, and that’s not just the techniques and tools but also the mindset of the whole educational institution. As learning develops and changes so do the environments in which we learn, we need not abandon the values that traditional techniques can give us but at the same time we must not reject future techniques and tools or dismiss them as a new fad.

2. Do you agree that the absence of what the authors call ‘paralinguistic cues’ in an online environment can limit the effectiveness of online tuition? What do you think Ricahrdson means by 'effectiveness' here?

Sometimes the body language issue can work against you in many respects, people gladly stereotype other people according to age group, gender, fashion and personal interests, which is not always a positive pastime which can also have detrimental effects when F2F tuition is taking place, when I was at school all teachers dressed and looked the same, this was my experience, that they were all the same, possibly due to this reason. However I would be foolish to think the same today. Sometimes not seeing the oracle can be an advantage so I fail to see the political correctness of this statement. ‘Effectiveness’ there’s that word again Lesley that I have also be guilty of using, the word that is very difficult to measure, therefore effectiveness is going to be a different interpretation for each of us.