What are tutors' perceptions of an online tutoring project-Digital Learning Companion-During the COVID-19 pandemic? A case study in Taiwan.

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 outbreak has had serious impact on remote education and service-learning implementation in Taiwan. To alleviate these impacts, the Digital Learning Companion, an online tutoring project, was proposed to bridge the digital divide and learning gap among remote children, while offering university students an online service-learning environment. This project recruited international students as tutors for local children. To explore tutors' perceptions of this project during the COVID-19 pandemic, qualitative research, particularly a case study, was conducted. Adopting purposive sampling, 15 participants were chosen for interviews at the end of the project, and 10 reflective videos were used to reveal further information to supplement the interview results. Content analysis was employed to analyse the data. The findings implied that using JoinNet and tutoring journals significantly facilitated the tutoring process, which led to tutors' remarkable development in skills, social relationships, multicultural experience, altruism, social responsibility, self-efficacy, and affective values. However, they encountered some challenges, such as technical problems, communication barrier, lack of tutee information, and short tutoring duration. The solutions to these challenges and insightful suggestions for the project development are pointed out. The results of this study contribute to tutors' cognitive, social, and motivational development, and support the online service-learning-integrated curriculum, which can become a reference for further studies regarding online service-learning implementation to bridge the research gap.