A training program for online learning support staff for housewives, baby boomers, and other people with work experience

*This initiative was carried out at the Human Innovation Research Center (HiRC), Aoyama Gakuin University 's Organization for Social Collaboration, as a commissioned project by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology from 2008 to 2010, and has continued as an in-house project since then.

Program Overview

This project develops and provides an educational program to train online learning supporters (e-mentors) who will be responsible for supporting learning through online communication in distance education using ICT such as e-learning. The main participants are expected to be baby boomers who have retired from companies and housewives who have temporarily left the workforce due to childbirth and child-rearing.
As long as there is an internet connection, e-mentors can work anywhere, and there is a growing social need for this type of occupation to lead education using ICT to success. Participants are expected to write action plans for specific activities in situations where activity guidelines for learning support are presented, and to become able to carry out basic online learning support activities.

Program implementation report

This project aims to support re-learning in response to the needs of participants and society as an educational program for working adults. Therefore, we develop content, training, and tests with the aim of helping participants acquire practical skills that will contribute to their re-employment.

Specifically, the course combines the acquisition of basic knowledge through e-learning with the acquisition of practical skills through face-to-face training, making it convenient for participants while guaranteeing that the results will be useful in the workplace. The course process begins with a simple skills check test to confirm the minimum PC skill level required of the participants. Those who pass are given an orientation on the systems and program contents to be used. After that, e-learning and face-to-face training are alternated to improve the effectiveness of the learning. A final completion test is also conducted to guarantee results (see diagram).

This project is a training program organized by HiRC, and is equivalent to an extension program for working adults. It provides high-level educational services that are socially recognized, reflecting the contents of regular courses related to learning support provided at undergraduate and graduate schools, and the results of our university's research into e-Mentor. Therefore, it provided more thorough services than other extension programs.

Program Outcomes

Online learning supporters (mentors) are still in their infancy, and are not very well known at present. For this reason, we have made it possible for the "eLP Tutor" qualification, which is related to learning support and is among the e-learning professional qualifications offered by the Japan e-Learning Consortium (abbreviated as eLC), a non-profit organization, to be mutually certified. In addition, we have received cooperation from external cooperation organizations, companies, chambers of commerce, etc. in implementing and evaluating this project.

Over the two years, the course has produced over 140 graduates (who received certificates of completion from HiRC), of which approximately 17% became eLP tutors. In addition, approximately 28% of the graduates have found full-time or part-time employment and are active as online learners, achieving the goal of the business of re-education for working adults. In Japan, there were almost no learners who had systematically acquired knowledge and skills related to online learning support, so the significance of this business is extremely great.