Abstract:

Online tutoring is becoming increasingly popular in distance and conventional education systems. This has significant implications for effective teaching practices, satisfying educational experiences and motivations. Therefore, it is imperative that academics change their pedagogical approaches as they transition into their new roles. This paper presents my experiences and reflections as an online tutor within an open and distance learning (ODL) institution. The journey describes my engagements with 200 online students assigned to me. I describe the teaching perspectives and constructivist and behaviourist learning strategies used in designing online student-teacher and student-content interactions. The experiences and reflections include my development as an online tutor and researcher.

Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning theory and Bloom’s Taxonomy (2001) were employed to answer the following questions:
• What knowledge and skills did the tutor possess to help her transition from face-to-face teaching and learning to online learn and teaching?
• How did the tutor conceptualise the possessed knowledge and skills to understand the practice?
• How did the tutor put her ideas into practice?
• What were the challenging issues?

Qualitative methodology was employed and self-study design that encompassed action research, narrative enquiry and journal techniques were used to collect data.

This journey has provided a framework that can guide online tutoring practice and can help improve one’s professional development.

Keywords:

Online tutoring, distance learning.