Università degli Studi di Roma Foro Italico Workshop 2 Dual Career – e-tutoring

Workshop 4th Rome, October 28th, 2016 By University of Rome Foro Italico ESTPORT Unit

Topic of the 4th workshop An e-tutor for the lifelong learning and the dual-career of the student-athlete

We used the following two research questions as a starting point What are the best e-tools that we can utilize to mentor student-athletes and how can they be transformed into safe and effective lifelong tutoring environments for them? What are the advantages and disadvantages of utilizing e-tutorship in assisting dual-career and post-career student-athletes?

Methods used Focus groups …for whom is not familiar with the methodology

What is a focus group? A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging. Questions are asked in an interactive group setting where participants are free to talk with other group members. During this process, the researcher either takes notes or records the vital points he or she is getting from the group. Care should be noted to select members of the group carefully for effective and authoritative responses.

What emerged from our focus groups… What student athletes want is a system that helps them develop problem solving skills and to discover how to better understand things. The system has also to inspire confidence and motivate them to learn autonomously and in a critical way https://www.facebook.com/claforoitalico/?fref=ts

Virtual environment & web 2.0 Nowadays, virtual and networked environments based on the Web 2.0 technologies can offer new and outstanding possibilities to better mentoring and tutoring student-athletes who follow university courses. Online tutoring is usually practised utilizing different approaches and methodologies. Main online environments applied in tutorship of student-athletes tend to involve the utilization of VLE (Virtual Learning Environments) such as Moodle and Blackboard, or learning management systems.

The ongoing evolution of Web 2 The ongoing evolution of Web 2.0 technologies and of learning methodologies have made the process of online tutoring more accessible, friendly and easier to be carried out. This process seems to perfectly match the characteristics of the specific tutoring and mentoring for student-athletes.

Online tutoring The online tutoring can help student-athletes to be tutored and mentored both as individuals and as community of learners. Actually, the system can facilitate the achievement of the student-athlete’s tutorship, that is to say: critical and self-reflexivity, autonomous learning, knowledge construction, transformative and collaborative learning based on groups, the community of practice, online interaction, and discussion. The current online tutoring model is actually based on social constructivist learning principles and critical reflective thinking.

We have asked our student-athlets… Whether they were satisfied with e-tutorhip system within DUCASTUN or not What, in their opinion, were the the most effective e-tutoring tools they usually utilized

Sample= 29 students tutored by DUCASTUN

91.3% of the student-athletes were fully satisfied with the face-to-face and online tutorship

E-tutoring tools S-As have preferred more

Conclusions The new tools provided by Web 2.0 allow the student-athlete to share knowledge and open contents, and to develop abilities and skills to create learning communities that foster interpersonal communication. Through these resources, both dual-career and post- career student-athletes can develop skills for their future work and be supported in their re-training. The data from this study have shown that the easy accessibility from mobile phones and tablets explain the success of online tutoring tools.

Conclusive remarks This raises the question of the necessity to rethink the tutorship of student-athletes in light of the these new forms of communication which are transforming the social network in online learning and tutoring environments. In line with that, our study also shows the necessity to rethink the tutorship addressed to the student- athlete in terms of a specialized e-pedagogy whose aim is to make virtual environments comfortable learning venues for her/him and to enhance life long learning providing additional e-skills