I've been asked to review a study Price, Linda, Richardson, John T. E. and Jelfs, Anne(2007)'Face-to-face versus online tutoring support in distance education',Studies in Higher Education,32:1,1—20
Where to start with this article? First off, I find that the methodology and the execution of the study to be severely compromised. In particular, the fact that they collected ordinal data and the started to use mutivariate parametric inferential statistical tests shows a misunderstanding of the statistical tools they are using. Specifically, for the first two studies, they are treating the aggregate scale scores as somehow having some 'real' world comparable meaning in their calculations of effect sizes (rather than just relative values that are either 'greater' or 'less' than a reference point - but by how much we don't know simply because the scales are ordinal). The editors of this journal clearly are not on top of this as this should never have been published. Someone find some vacant gallows!
This makes their actual analysis and actual discussion in the realm of conjecture rather than with any corroborative evidence behind it.
I've been asked to consider whether I agree with Price et al. that online tuition is a pastoral activity and not a purely academic activity? I'm not clear as to whether there really is a difference between 'purely academic' rather than pastoral activity. I think this is an artificiality that the authors brought up rather than any 'real' difference. I mean seriously when would an effective 'face to face' tutor be totally ignorant of what a student is showing or feeling in terms of their emotions, or involvement with the 'strictly' academic topic matter? Since all students that I've come across are actually humans and not emotionless robots, it would be inhuman to not recognise that 'Jenny' is down in the dumps and not really paying attention to the tutorial when previously she was such an engaged spark in the group. Every effectively tutor that I've known would not turn Jenny away if she asked to confide with them that she's not focussing because her favourite aunt appears to have been diagnosed with a terminal condition with only weeks to live. So are Price et al really surprised that online tutors should not have a similar 'pastoral' role?
And I've also been asked to consider whether the absence of what the authors call ‘paralinguistic cues’ in an online environment can limit the effectiveness of online tuition? Yes of course I agree but in fairness this statement appears to suggest that there are no alternatives. In fairness to the authors they did not state this. They simply stated that care needs to be taken to compensate for the apparent lack of paralinguistic cues. Hence the use of emoticons in text based communication to supply some of those cues. Modern 'internet chat' software can even translate the keyboard 'emoticons' such as :-) or :-( into 'smiley' or 'frown' faces sometimes even with small animations.