Abstract:

Professional development of teachers in the area of online course design and tutoring, is becoming very important at all education levels. This paper describes an online training program called "Online course design and tutoring", which has been developed at the School of electrical and computer engineering in the Academy of technical and art applied studies Belgrade in Serbia, as a part of Erasmus+ program of the European Union "Professional Development of Vocational Education Teachers with European Practices". This training program is developed for vocational education teachers (in-service trainers, instructors, mentors etc.) to improve design and efficiency of online courses by using current methodologies and technologies. The main goal of above-mentioned training program is developing the following: e-laboratories with instructions for program tools which are currently present in the area of design and teaching online courses, same as a network for the professional development of vocational teachers, based on an open program platform. Developed training program delivers these topics: modern teaching strategies, Lms environment, video materials in teaching, instructional design, online course tutoring and online course evaluation. It is carried out exclusively in online form and it lasts 6 working weeks. The training program gives vocational teachers a theoretical base in the form of interactive lectures, video tutorials for working with recommended program tools, tutor guidance, administrator and media designer support. The regular training program tasks for individual and team work contain: going through interactive lectures and video tutorials, participating in discussions and video meetings. Practical work is focused on developing online courses in the specific areas of training program participants’ expertise. The training program evaluation includes marking the participants’ progress and reports about their success in the finished training as well as collecting information from them about the quality of the training program. This paper contains a brief description of the training program development and testing results.

Keywords:

Professional development, vocational education teachers, online course design, online course tutoring.