CERTIFIED EUROPEAN E-TUTOR: CONCEPTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF A EUROPEAN CERTIFICATION STANDARD FOR THE TRAINING OF ONLINE ‘E-TUTOR’ TEACHERS

E-learning is shaping the development of education in Europe and points to new and creative ways for teaching in vocational education and training (VET).This development, however, has not reached all parts of Europe according to surveys by CEDEFOP (European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training) and the quality of e-learning based teaching in VET varies widely, depending on the personal competence of the teacher. Furthermore, different educational traditions and cultural predispositions need to be taken into account when it comes to the question of how the acceptance of e-learning can be increased.

The aim of the Certified European e-Tutor (CET) project (funded as part of the European Commission's Leonardo Da Vinci programme) is to provide teachers with the opportunity to take part in systematic training, ensuring that they are able to use e-learning tools in a professional and efficient way. This goal however, raises the question of how e-Tutor skills are acquired and how the quality of knowledge and competence is assessed. Currently, a clearly defined European e-tutor competence model does not exist. The CET project believes this problem can be solved by a European-wide certificate for e-Tutoring in VET in order to ensure a widely accepted and recognised quality standard in EU countries.

This paper presents the preliminary findings of the project and reflects on the results of two pilot programmes conducted in the Czech Republic and Finland over a period of ten weeks involving a mixed cohort of students undertaking a specifically developed e-Tutoring course. Furthermore, the paper presents an initial vision for a unified European e-Tutor qualification scheme which defines binding learning and competence standards for VET teachers. Finally, the paper presents a model of operation that can be applied to this e-Tutoring certification process that will be utilised following the completion of the project in September 2013.