Title: Digital badges for in-service training of. online tutors.

Transcription

1 Title: Digital badges for in-service training of online tutors. Authors Dr. Stefan Stenbom, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Dr. Simon Benjaminsson, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Dr. Stefan Hrastinski, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Dr. Marti Cleveland-Innes, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, Athabasca University, Canada. Conference strand/session type Strand: Learning Effectiveness Session types: Individual or Dual Presentations Abstract Please keep abstract under 50 words. In this presentation, an application where digital badges are used for continuing training of online tutors is reviewed. First, we present how digital badges are used in a math tutoring service for K 12 students. Then, we discuss benefits and challenges of digital badges for development of in-service online tutors.

2 Extended Abstract Please keep extended abstract under 1500 words. Introduction In online and distance education, an important part of the learning design is often the use of tutors. Online tutors can be described as persons without a formal course responsibility that interact with students with the aim to develop the student s knowledge of a specific topic (Hampel & Stickler, 2005; Ng, 2007). Examples of activities that tutors perform are to foster discussions in online forums, to mark student s assignment, and to engage in one-to-one interactions (Barker, 2002; Kopp, Matteucci, & Tomasetto, 2012). The role of the tutor is often assigned to older students or part-time staff members. Tutors are sometimes given an introduction to tutoring but rarely receive formal training. An example of online tutoring is the case of online math coaching, where university students studying to become math teachers, support K-12 students in math during evenings using a synchronous chat service with text messaging and a shared digital whiteboard. The tutors, in this case, attend an introductory course in online tutoring. This course includes a theoretical and practical part. In the theoretical part, tutors are introduced to an inquiry-based coaching model called Relationship of Inquiry validated in Stenbom, Hrastinski, and Cleveland-Innes (2012), Stenbom, Cleveland-Innes, and Hrastinski (2016), and by Stenbom, Jansson, and Hulkko (2016). The Relationship of Inquiry is an adoption of the Community of Inquiry by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) to a one-to-one tutoring setting. In the practical part, the tutors are introduced to the coaching software and put their theoretical knowledge into practice. Upon completion of the course, tutors receive a two ECTS credit certificate. This case has, however, so far lacked a continuing training for in-service tutors. No formal evaluation of the tutor s professional skills has been made after completing the course. During recent years, the use of digital badges has gained interest in educational settings. Digital badges are symbols that can be awarded to a person that have fulfilled some predefined criteria (Carey, 2012). They originate from the physical emblems displaying the accomplishment of various achievements by for example the armed forces. According to Gibson, Ostashewski, Flintoff, Grant, and Knight (2015), digital badges enable a contemporary learning opportunity where a learner can show a set skills in more informal learning settings. As such badges motivate continued engagement, which increases time on task and supports skill acquisition through performance (Gibson et al., 2015, p. 403). Digital badges have also been found valuable for their alternative forms of assessment and the ability

3 to easy display evidence of a skill while important concerns are related to the actual validity or credibility of an earned digital badge (Jovanovic & Devedzic, 2015). Following this, the aim of this work is to evaluate the use of digital badges for in-service training of online tutors. In our presentation, we present an application case where digital badges are used as an integrated part of an online tutoring platform. Then, we discuss benefits and challenges of using digital badges for continuing training of online tutors. Using badges for tutoring professional skills In order to promote continuing in-service development of tutors using digital badges, a set of professional skills was identified. A professional skill can be described as the ability to do something work-related well and is usually a result of experience and training. For this specific application, a review of research about general tutoring skills, online tutoring skills and essential skills identified in the Relationship of Inquiry model was conducted (e.g. McPherson & Nunes, 2004; Stenbom, Jansson, et al., 2016; Wisker, Exley, Antoniou, & Ridley, 2008). From this examination, six professional skills were identified as central for online, inquiry-based, tutoring (Martinsson, 2015; Hrastinski, Stenbom, & Cleveland-Innes, in review). These are the abilities to: encourage discussion, encourage reflection, provide emotional support, build trust, goal-oriented communication, and elicit student s level. The six identified professional skills were following the identification constructed into digital badges. Then a badge issuing component was added to the math coach software. The component was based on a Mozilla badge baking library issuing Open Badges.. The system was put into practice by letting a tutor that thinks she or he have fulfilled the requirements of a professional skill select the tutoring session on the software s dashboard, write a motivation and send the request. The request is then reviewed by the person responsible of tutor training and badges are awarded upon agreement. In order to evaluate the use of digital badges, the badging system was activated for a period of two months allowing tutors to submit for and be awarded badges. This was then followed by a survey study where all tutors involved in Math Coach were asked to evaluate the applicability of the identified professional skills and their corresponding badge as well as their experience of the in-service training. Results of the survey indicate that digital badges can be an effectual intervention to enable continuing in-service training for online tutors but some challenges need to be addressed. Examples of benefits are the consolidation of all skills that take place when the tutor analyze their own tutoring practice, and the feedback of performance provided by the tutor trainer. Examples of challenges for the tutors are the ability to understand the content of each professional skill, and that the reflection and requesting of badges can be time consuming.

4 References Barker, P. (2002). On Being an Online Tutor. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 39(1), doi: / Carey, K. (2012). A future full of badges. Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from Garrison, D., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education. Internet and Higher Education, 2(2 3), Gibson, D., Ostashewski, N., Flintoff, K., Grant, S., & Knight, E. (2015). Digital badges in education. Education and Information Technologies, 20(2), doi: /s Hampel, R., & Stickler, U. (2005). New skills for new classrooms: Training tutors to teach languages online. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 18(4), doi: / Hrastinski, S., Stenbom, S., & Cleveland-Innes, M. (in review). Tutoring online tutors: using digital badges to encourage the development of online tutoring skills. Jovanovic, J., & Devedzic, V. (2015). Open Badges: Novel Means to Motivate, Scaffold and Recognize Learning. Technology, Knowledge and Learning, 20(1), doi: /s Kopp, B., Matteucci, M. C., & Tomasetto, C. (2012). E-tutorial support for collaborative

5 online learning: An explorative study on experienced and inexperienced e-tutors. Computers and Education, 58(1), doi: /j.compedu Martinsson, A. M. (2015). Coaching skills in online math coaching: A transcript analysis. Master thesis, Uppsala University. McPherson, M., & Nunes, M. B. (2004). The role of tutors as a integral part of online learning support. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-learning, 7(1). Ng, K. C. (2007). Replacing face-to-face tutorials by synchronous online technologies: Challenges and pedagogical implications. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 8(1). Stenbom, S., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Hrastinski, S. (2016). Emotional presence in a relationship of inquiry: The case of one-to-one online math coaching. Online Learning, 20(1). Stenbom, S., Hrastinski, S., & Cleveland-Innes, M. (2012). Student-Student Online Coaching as a Relationship of Inquiry: An Exploratory Study from the Coach Perspective. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 16(5), Stenbom, S., Jansson, M., & Hulkko, A. (2016). Revising the Community of Inquiry framework for the analysis of one-to-one online learning relationships. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 17(3), Wisker, G., Exley, K., Antoniou, M., & Ridley, P. (2008). Working one-to-one with students. Abingdon: Routledge.

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