ABSTRACT
The School of Education, University of Nottingham (UoN), UK and Beiwai:Online, Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) Beijing, China have been engaged on a collaborative project to develop a generic module for the training of online tutors as part of the eChina-UK programme. Participatory design approaches have been used within this project to allow potential users of the module to play an important role in the design process. Academics, technologists and tutors from China and UK worked together in small groups over nine months to produce the module materials. Reflective accounts, audio recordings of face to face (F2F) group working and interviews have been used to explore the design process. This paper describes the participatory design approach in this project and explores an activity theory based analysis approach that is used to identify some of the factors that affected the design process. Keywords: participatory design; activity theory; tutor training; intercultural INTRODUCTION This paper provides an introduction to research into the process of participatory design of online materials for the training of online tutors: etutor training. A collaboration between the School of Education, University of Nottingham (UoN), UK and Beiwai Online, Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) Beijing, China set out to develop an etutor training module for use initially within BFSU, but which was intended to be developed eventually as a set of generic materials for use across the Higher Education sector. Participative design approaches that involve a wide range of professionals, i.e. technologists, academics and etutors have been adopted to support a shared dialogue between the cultures to produce effective etutor training materials. There is much rhetoric about the importance and the value of including potential users in the design of online materials and experience of this process indicates that it is complex and time consuming. However it was felt that the development of the tutor training module would benefit greatly from an involvement of some of the Chinese tutors who would be potentially completing the tutor training module. It was also felt important to develop an understanding of the participatory design process to inform ways of working within the collaborative project and to share this more widely. The research reported here explores the cross cultural interactions among the groups of people involved in the design process. The paper begins by contextualising the research by describing the project, the structure of the tutor training module and the participatory design approach used to develop the materials for the module. An activity theory approach has been used to support the analysis of the data and the paper provides an analysis of two cases of group activity within the project to illuminate the value of this research approach. THE CONTEXT The School of Education, UoN, UK and Beiwai Online, BFSU, Beijing, China were engaged in a collaborative project to develop an online Masters in English Language Teaching for teachers at tertiary level from 2004 – 6. Details of these Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) funded developments and the wider eChina-UK programme of which this project was only one part can be found on . As part of the UoN-BFSU collaboration and as a result of a user needs analysis of potential tutors for the Masters course it became clear that a ‘new’ approach to tutor training was needed. This resulted in further collaboration by the partners to develop a generic module for the training of online tutors as part of the eChina-UK programme., funded by the institution themselves together with HEFCE. TUTOR TRAINING IN CHINA The approach to tutor training that exists in China supports the learning and teaching activities in the course and this has been the approach taken at Beiwai:Online for their current programmes.
