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!