ETUTORING AND E-LEARNING COURSE DESIGN; SMALL UNIVERSITY - SMALL BUDGET, BIG EXPERIENCE

The innovation in the use of ICTs in education has opened a great deal of new learning opportunities. The evolution of these technologies has been the scenario for the development of distance education which has become a choice for those people whose “physical and time limitations” (Benjamin,A. 1994:45) impeded them to continue or start their professional development. Nowadays, online learning delivery as a form of Distance Education through the Internet not only shortens distances between people and educational institutions, offers flexibility on high quality education but it also represents potential for expansion and a profitable economic activity that should not be ignored by HE institutions.

Many universities, colleges and training schools worldwide such as Open University in the UK, the University of Phoenix in the U.S., Athabasca University in Canada among other are already offering a variety of “networked learning” (Salmon, G. 2000:8) courses that are aimed to satisfiy these new demands of globalized societies. In addition, this current online madness trend has also encouraged other institutions to include OL in their curricula and educational offer. Nevertheless, designing OL courses based on CMC and other types of ICT is not an easy task since their implementation implies “teaching competencies” (Salmon, G., 2000) that according to some researchers and experts in the field have proved to be different from traditional face-to-face practices (Smith, B., 2001:1-2). Therefore, for effective online practice tutors not only need teaching expertise but training as well as learning experiences within the online environment.

The concern of HE institutions in providing high quality teaching through “internal quality enhancement” and “professional development” (Cooper, A. 2001) has been the scenario for research to find the potential benefits of peer observation. Within the online environment some case studies on Peer Observation of Teaching (Gosling, D., 2002) and other areas have enriched the e-tutoring practice. In this paper the present writer analyses an experience on peer observation of teaching which was developed into five stages: planning a course, getting ready and pre-observation, during observation, post-observation and personal insights.