The Ten Principles of Distance Education

Hello everyone! Today I’d like to share a video presented by Duysevi Karan-Miyar, a doctor student in Instruction Technology in Distance Edycation, in Florida. In this video Duysevi shares some important principles of distance education. How do you think the knowledge about those principles help us to be better tutors ou students? Do you agree with them? Is there anything else that you consider fundamental in Distance Education? 

Watch the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R66wV8wr7nA Then, share your opinion with us!!

Students' "loneliness" in Distance Education

This post comes from another activity of the Tutor Training course I and Isabela are taking. We were supposed to take an interview with a professional in distance education. I decided to interview Isabela because she is a more experienced professional in tutoring than me and she had answered my questions about many aspects of distance courses, from the tutors’ role to students’ development. Isabela said some interesting things that I didn’t mentioned in my activity and I would like to share in this blog with you.

It was about “loneliness” students feel and how the tutors have to deal with it. In her words, she said: “The primary means of Distance education these days are digital media, which has a multitude of resources. However, the student still has the feeling of helplessness and always seeks the figure of the teacher, who still has doubts about his own role. I think this feeling is very natural, since the educational culture of our country is supported in traditional teaching model. Thus, we are talking about a  paradigm shift that is beyond didactic or teaching methodology. This is a reform in the concept of education, how it occurs, and what is its possibilities in the digital age. Anyway, it is the implementation of a new culture in which both students and teachers belong”.

When I thought about students’ helplessness, I remembered what occasionally happened with my own students. Some of them asked me first about doubts they would had answered for themselves if they had read properly the lesson, or had done the activity first. In my first semester, I answered them, today I know that tutoring is not about telling the students what they want to know, but guiding them where or how to find it. Of course, this isn’t only part of the role of a distance education teacher, but also to teachers in classroom. This is about the shift Isabela mentioned. In our country, both students and teachers are used to the model where knowledge comes from the teacher alone, and students should only receive it. When tutors aren’t prepared for these changes, Distance Education loses its purposes, this is one of the reasons the traditional model still affects the learning process. With preparation, tutors may avoid this behavior from them and also from their students. 

Interview with Rose Sousa, a local tutor in Quixadá

Hello everyone! I'm Isabela Damasceno. As you know, one of the objectives of this blog is to discuss some aspects of distance education, including the roles of students and tutors. Concerning UFC Virtual and its distance courses, there are two kinds of tutors: the distance and local tutors The distance tutors travel to the poles and teach students on specific days. Then, they are responsible for supporting them in their needs throughout online interaction. The local tutors are physically closer to the students, since they usually live in the same city. They establish an important connection between students and distance tutors, among other activities. Today, we are going to focus on the local tutors. In order to better understand what their function is, I talked to Roselene Sousa, a very experienced tutor at Quixadá. I’ve been working with Rose (as she likes to be called) since the beginning of this semester. She’s been a tutor in Curso de Licenciatura em Letras Inglês for more than five years and she has been involved in many disciplines, ranging from those which purpose is the development of language skills, through disciplines of literature to pedagogical ones. I asked her opinion about the roles of local tutors. She believes they should mediate communication between the distance tutor and the students, motivate students to work individually and collaboratively; monitor student activities in accordance with the course schedule; establish permanent contact with students through VDL and e-mail and provide support to the course coordinator and the distance tutor in the development of meetings. I also asked Rose about the major challenges a local tutor faces. She said that she has to bring everyone together into the educational process, but some students lack interest and perspective. This way, one of her challenges is to keep them always motivated. Another challenge is taking students to develop autonomous research, reading and study habits and also discipline, so that knowledge can be constructed. As we can see, local tutors are really important for the development of a distance course. They have to cope with many different activities and they face many challenges in order to make a good work. Everyone involved in distance education has a role to play which is vital to the smooth running of the process. Understanding each of them and their development is a good way to better understand the whole context and to respect even more all the professionals involved in this activity. We’d like to thank Rose, who gave us a great and valuable contribution, sharing her experience with us. Thank you so much, Rose!

Raquel Ribeiro

Hi! I’m Raquel, English teacher, Tutor at UFC Virtual and also a master’s student at UECE. If you didn't read our introduction, I'm working with my dear colleague Isabela in this blog. As we are going to talk about tutoring, I’d like to start talking a little about my experience and some personal thoughts I have as a Distance Education teacher. 
Well, I’m tutoring for almost a year now and I’ve been learning a lot with Professors and even with my students about this new modality. As a master’s student, my focus is on Multimodality in English teaching which I think it also plays an important role on teaching and learning foreign languages in distance, and personally, it’s one of the reasons for my increasing interest about Distance Education. 
I started working as a tutor last semester with written and oral subjects, but now I'm only with the oral ones. Speaking generally, being a tutor brings a lot of responsibilities, because we give support to students who live kilometers away, promoting their learning process collectively and, at the same time, developing students’ autonomy. I would say that this is harder if we talk about foreign language distance courses, because in my opinion, we have to encourage students even more, due to the difficulties most of them have to finish their studies, especially the ones from the countryside. Encouraging students is another way of avoiding the feeling of loneliness, guiding them to stay in touch with their classmates in a collaborative way, because this is also an important role on learning process. 
One of the students' difficulties really worries me, that is the belief some of them have that with a Distance course they won't have to spend long hours studying, that it will be much easier to have a Graduation degree. Sure distance courses have the facilities of online learning: you can study anytime, anywhere, just being connected, unfornatelly most of the students have little time to do their activities, which makes some of them giving up at one point. That's why, I think encouragement is so important to students to continue, guiding them to search for real practices and to be organized.
I'd like to finish saying that this new practice of my professional life has been challenging but also encouraging to increase my own potential as Distance Education teacher, but I still have much to learn as a tutor. 

Due to changes in society and in communication and the increasing use of new technologies in many areas of knowledge, new demands on education have appeared. Distance Education is now spreading rapidly all around, including here in Brazil. There are many Brazilian students looking for this modality as a way to achieve High Degrees of Education, which were hard to be reached before the implementation of these courses, specially in the country side.  

Distance Education in Brazil was officially regulated  by Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional n°9.394, in december 20th, 1996. As a new modality, there are many challenges to be faced by everyone who is involved in this system, be it teachers (tutor) or students. They are the two most important elements in a distance course. This way, this blog aims at discussing tutors and students' roles, focusing on their challenges in distance learning.