Online Environments

Challenges to an existing face-to-face peer-tutoring model grew into an opportunity to integrate online technologies as a support for English autonomous learning in two undergraduate teacher education programs at a Colombian public university. This qualitative study examines how a group of tutees' exposure to an online-based peer-tutoring model shapes their autonomy. Informed by data from questionnaires, a focus group interview, tutees' logs, and records of their engagement with the model's internet resources, researchers identified a change in participants' conceptualization of autonomous learning and an impact on their self-directed practices rooted in the immediacy, accessibility, comfort and availability of resources that the online peer-tutoring model favors.

The challenge of adopting virtual education to respond the needs of a global knowledge society in the 21st century requires the existence and implementation of systematic instructional models that fulfill the students’ learning needs and develop autonomous and collaborative academic practices mediated by Information and Communication Technologies. In response to the requirements for innovation and improvement in higher education programs, the author’s department created this project to examine methodologies for the implementation of open, flexible, learner-centered online courses that allow students in language teaching programs to use technology as a means to expand life-long learning opportunities. This article presents results from the systematic construction and implementation of an online course grounded in a fusion of principles and features from Salmon´s (2000) and Keller´s (1987) instructional design theories, as well as Constructivist theory. This course design experience has provided the basis for the creation of virtual courses in the author’s university over the last two years.