Work specificity of a university teacher in e-learning environment

On the base of the analyses of Russian and foreign research works some specific difficulties of university teachers in e-learning were considered. First of all, new roles and functions of the teacher are reflected in a new term: the tutor. The main task of the tutor is to build an indirect communication via information technology and to humanize on-line education, since it is the sense of isolation to be one of the reasons why students stop e-learning. Students need to compare their work with work of the others, their rhythm with the rhythm of others. Their interaction is the core of e-learning. The paper describes the categories of tutor-student interaction: psychological and psychosocial support of the tutor; organizational and methodic support; pedagogical support; technical support. The specific features of pedagogical, methodical, organizational and psychological activities of the tutor are formulated. The teacher should not only use information and communications technology but be able to apply these tools in the educational sphere. When the tutor organizes student’s activity, it is necessary to promote student work to develop their responsibility for learning. Thus, fulfillment of tasks within the set terms and their assessment are of the primary importance. The tutor faces the need to develop a different mode to answer immediately students’ questions. Besides, it is important to improve his/her emotional intelligence. Moreover, e-tutor should teach not only to learn, but to teach to learn in distance. He/she should teach the students such skills as finding information in the Internet, project definition, decision making, planning, self-organization and self-discipline, cooperation ability, project completion. The article also presents the key quality and competence of the tutor, such as: focus on cooperation, proactivity and reactivity, perspicacity, ability to provide different solutions, ability to help students in good time, social congruence, sociability, rich imagination and humor, discipline and consistency. We made the conclusion that the development of tutor’s emotional intelligence, the ways of creation of emotionally comfortable environment in e-learning, techniques of time-management in on-line education, conception of manuals for tutors are the most important trends for future research.

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