Abstract:

Developing, using and assessing systems within the Educational Informatics field require its professionals to deepen their theoretical and methodological knowledge. To achieve excellence in the process of professional training, a systematic education transcending any short course focused only in the use of some of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools is needed.
In this sense, the Faculty of Exact Sciences and Technologies of the National University of Santiago del Estero, Argentina aims to create a local environment for academic reflection where knowledge generation and production is promoted. Thus, among other actions, the “Master in Educational Informatics” Graduate Program was first run this year.
This paper aims to present the design and implementation of a pedagogical proposal for the education of virtual tutors. The experience was developed along the “Virtual Learning Environments” Module included in the first year of the Program and whose objectives are: to get knowledge of the various Virtual Learning Environments (VELs) and of the criteria for their evaluation; to investigate on new trends; to gain expertise in the use of one VEL in particular.
Its targeted learners are graduates from Informatics Programs of the Faculty that currently teach at any educational level.
In designing the proposal the learning objectives related to those of the module, the socio-cultural context. The contents were included in the study plan, the competencies inherent to a virtual tutor, and the graduate´s profile were all taken into account systematically.
The methodological strategy was oriented towards a seminary-workshop modality with an on-going evaluation. In the seminar the main concepts related to the VLEs were discussed, individual and group monographic assignments were developed. In the workshop, the participants were proposed to revisit their own classroom teaching proposals that they impart in their contexts to now move them into a VLE.
The virtual activities were carried out on the Moodle Platform and combined with the in-person encounters. The implementation of the course was monitored out of data recording and observation of the students’ performance.
First the results from the diagnosis test were introduced. The test aimed to verify the learners’ level of preparation to understand the contents of the module and to know their expectations about it.
Then the individual and group activities, the accompanying and evaluating processes and the final project of the workshop were described. To analyze the experience as “virtual education tutor” gained by the students in terms of both the competencies and skills acquired, a survey was designed and conducted. Later the analysis of the results obtained in terms of the learning quality criteria is shown.
At last the conclusions highlighting the high level of knowledge gained by the participants and the valuation of the VLE pedagogical and technical potentialities are drawn. As a future research line is posited the creation of a tutor-learner collaborative space where the decision-making process defining a formative strategy that potentiates ICTs-based learning can be analyzed.

Keywords:

virtual education, learning virtual environment, virtual tutor, posgraduate teaching education, pedagogic proposal