Elena Zhizhko
Master Program in Humanities and Education Research, Autonomous University of Zacatecas, Torre de Posgrados II, Av. Preparatoria, s/n, Fracc. Progreso, Zacatecas, Zac, 98000, Mexico.
ABSTRACT
This paper presents the results of scientific, pedagogical research, which goal was to reveal the main features and the role of virtual tutoring in computer-assisted learning for marginalized population analyzing the Mexican Care Program for Demand of Adult Education and its instruments: Meeting Points and Community Places. Author founds that the virtual tutoring in Mexican computer-assisted learning for marginalized population tutoring is an essential component of the educational process, is completely free, accessible and flexible. The users of the Mexican Care Program for Demand of Adult Education can have virtual tutoring not only in Spanish, but also in 63 languages of the indigenous ethnic groups. The virtual tutoring as part of the computer-assisted learning for the marginalized population is relatively recent tutoring modality and has had rapid development. It is a system of online academic activities planned, scheduled, registered, evaluated and followed up. The virtual tutor in the education for the marginalized population in Mexico acquires not only the general skills of e-moderating but also masters the specific psycho-pedagogical and psychosocial skills for mentoring a marginalized adult.
INTRODUCTION
It is a fact that, as technological development advances, the use of new technology platforms applied to education facilitates the work of the tutors to guide, motivate and induce students´ activities, so that they can build their own knowledge. In this sense, virtual tutoring is a process of guidance, help or advice, which the teacher makes on the student to achieve different objectives: integrate him into the technical-human learning environment, solve the doubts of understanding the content presented to him, facilitating their integration in the formative action, or simply overcoming the isolation that these environments produce in the individual, and which are a determining factor for the high dropout rate of students in these training actions.
On the other hand, dos serve virtual tutoring to create new forms of inclusion/exclusion: the connected and disconnected people? Is it possible to achieve that virtual tutoring becomes mechanism of promoting for the less fortunate? The answer lies in the analysis of educational initiatives that make the virtual tutoring the main strategy of inclusion in the productive life of the most marginalized. Examples of the use of virtual tutoring by the vulnerable population are Meeting Points and Community Places of the Care Program for Demand of Adult Education developed by the Mexican National Institute for Adult Education. What are the characteristics of virtual tutoring that is implemented in these programs?
The aim of the research which results are presented in this article was to identify the main features of the virtual tutoring in computer-assisted learning for marginalized population realized by Meeting Points and Community Places under the Care Program for Demand of Adult Education belonging to the Mexican National Institute for Adult Education. This work is a documentary-bibliographic study, which was performed under the critical-dialectical approach, using research methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison, and generalization that were necessary to study the original texts and official documents, an organization of the studied material and its exposure.
Thus, the analytical method allows examining the documents governing computer assisted learning for marginalized in Mexico, systematizing its content, in order to visualize the organizational, operational and procedural model of virtual tutoring. The method of systematic-structural analysis facilitated the identification of the specific features of the organization of virtual tutoring in computer-assisted learning for marginalized in Mexico; the method of theoretical generalization provided the tools for the formulation and concretization of the conclusions and substantiation of research perspectives on the issues of the of virtual tutoring for marginalized in Mexico.
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