Individualization in practice

Scenario C: What might the principle of Individualization look like in practice?

In Scenario C, Luis has volunteered to be an online instructor-trainer for his department's online tutoring program. The tutors, whose "home" locations are different branch campuses of a medium-sized private university, will be allowed to work from computer stations at their campuses, as well as from their residences. Luis is beginning training with ten graduate student tutor-trainees. His stated goal is to bring all ten of the tutors through the program, although privately he thinks that he might lose up to three of them through natural attrition.

These trainees have varying levels of ability with technology; just as important, they have varying levels of experience with teaching writing. Some were teachers before they began graduate work; others have taught for up to three years in the graduate program; still others are relative novices. Luis needs to decide how he will work both systematically, yet individually, with each of the trainees.

Using a training framework that has been successful for us, Luis might begin by training only one or two of the more experienced tutors in order to develop early iterations of his training program. In effect, doing so will help him to investigate his practices, as Scenario A suggests.  Then, having developed an initial training program, Luis might employ some of the following strategies adapted from Chapter 2 of Preparing Educators for Online Writing Instruction: Principles and Processes (16-17):

• Create an internal structure of mentor/trainer using initial trainees who have succeeded in his training program and who have demonstrated capable work with live students.
• Pair each trainee with an online mentor or individual trainer who then coaches that trainee (or several trainees) throughout the program.
• Develop simulated teaching scenarios to occur between individual trainers and trainees. [See Chapters 4 and 6 for practice simulations that readers can adapt to their own institutional settings.]
• Tailor and implement feedback protocols based on trainees' performances on the simulations.  Feedback through commentary can be embedded locally within the interaction under review, provided via a more global assessment, or both. 
• With attention to participants' needs or the training schedule, implement online group and/or paired discussion whereby trainers and trainees can talk about training and teaching issues.
• Employ a rotation of material that speaks to various learning styles so that all participants can comprehend and internalize information quickly (Barkely and Bianco 14):
  • Reading pertinent theory,
  • Discussing pedagogical principles,
  • Commenting on simulated student texts with programmatic outcomes in mind,
  • Assessing one's own work for the quality of different strategies, and
  • Writing feedback for another teacher's texts and/or teaching interactions.

Finally, Luis might consider what he has learned from early training efforts that will assist with his goals of investigating his practice, immersing trainees into the online instructional environment, and individualizing their training program.