Tutorials management
From Espok - Wiki
« Tutorials Management » in the eSpok universe links together two notions, « Tutorials » and « Virtual Classrooms », which offer to the tutor and the student another place to meet each other, a place with no more constraints of time or space.
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« Tutorials »
Without any surprise, a tutorial is a time that a tutor dedicates to a student to teach his knowledge ; it’s the basis of the language learning which blends speaking, listening, showing… In the eSpok universe, the user (tutor/student) can find not only one type of tutorial (the physical tutorial) but two types, respecting the philosophy of the tutorial but giving much more opportunities to have useful exchanges.
« Offline tutorials »
Offline tutorials are classic tutorials, where tutors and students meet in a physical classroom ; eSpok doesn’t change these tutorials which are directly linked with the identity of each school, but it brings two importants « plus » :
- the tutorial itself keeps being physical, but its management is now facilitated by an online organization
- the tutorial is no longer ended after the ring, because a direct and alive contact keeps existing between the tutor and his student thanks to the different eSpok tools (messages box, e-homework…)
« Online Tutorials »
Online tutorials are only available thanks to the eSpok universe ; they complete the services of the school by giving much more time and space available, but not only : they really bring something new, allowing the student to learn differently outside of the traditional « face-to-face » frame.
Creation
Currently, the tutorial appointments can only be created either by a student who makes a request to his tutor, either by the master who assign a student and a date/time. More details in Student Account and Master Account. The invitee(s) receives a notification (see Message Box) and can accept or not the appointment. Coming soon : possibility for the master to allow (or not) the tutor to directly request an appointment from a student.
« Virtual Classroom »
The « Virtual Classroom » (or « VC ») is the place which hosts the tutor and the student(s) during their online tutorial. The main purpose is to offer a simple online support to make this new kind of tutorial the closest possible to the classic tutorial, but also to bring new tools for the teaching. The VC is available for 1-to-1 or for 1-to-many tutorials ; the interface is quite similar for tutors and for students, and slightly adapted for 1-to-M.
Enter the VC
15 minutes before the beginning of the tutorial, the user can have access to this virtual place from his Dashboard : in the My Event part of the page, appear all the tutorials of the day, especially the next one, which is available by clicking on the red button called « Enter room ». Then the virtual classroom appears in a new page, and the user has to wait the other user(s) to begin the tutorial. If he wants to use the camera/microphone, he has to accept that the VC uses them.
Interactive VC
The interactive part of the VC is localized on the left side of the page, it includes all the tools needed to permit a good communication between the tutor and the student(s).
- Setup is localized on the top left of the page, just next to the logo. Three actions can be done from here :
- increase or decrease the volume of loudspeakers, by moving the cursor next to the loudspeaker icon
- increase or decrease the volume of the microphone, by moving the cursor next to the microphone icon
- switch off/on your camera, by clicking on the camera icon, beween the two other icons
- Videos are localized on the middle of the left side, they are only available on 1-to-1 tutorials. The biggest one (on the left) is the interlocutor’s video, the other one (on the right) is the user’s own video. These are tools which contribute to make the online tutorial closer to the classic tutorial, helping the student to be as natural as in the classic classroom. However, if the tutor wants to improve his student skills in phone call, they have the possibility to switch off the cameras from the setup.
- Chat module is localized on the bottom of the page ; it’s very similar to clasic chat : one of the user writes a message and it appears just after the user’s name in the chat window. It can help the users to interact easier, or it can be a way to give the orders. A specific tools is available in the whiteboard to write text.
« Whiteboard »
Whiteboard is an efficient support for the tutor to catch the student(s) attention, by passing documents, by showing directly the things… This interface is drived by the tutor but shared by all the users, who can « write » on it ; to clean the whiteboard, the user only has to click on the « clear all » button on the top (last button, on the right).
- Loading a document is possible only for the tutor, who can search and let appear in the whiteboard a document downloaded as a resource. To make this, he has to click on the icon [page + « A »] on the top left of the site, and then search the document as he uses to search it.
- Shapes are available from the buttons on the left of the whiteboard : the user clicks on the button linked with the shape he need (free shape / milks / square / round) and after he can design this shape in the whiteboard. He can chose the size and the color of the shape with the buttons on the top of the whiteboard. By clicking on the shape he has just designed, the user can switch the shape from an opaque shape into a transparent shape.
- Text is also available from the left buttons and adaptable from the top buttons; it’s an useful tool for teaching the listenning of a language, for instance.
Recorded tutorials
This option will be soon available ; it will allow the tutor to record the tutorial made in the virtual classroom, so that he creates a new resource available for all the students and the other tutors.
One-to-many adaptations (wiki in progress)
- no videos
- system of hands to allow a student to speak and to act on the whiteboard
