Tutor Training Seminars on the Virtual Campus for Public Health - 2024 Edition

The Virtual Campus for Public Health (VCPH) is a special program of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). It operates through a decentralized network comprising individuals, institutions, and organizations that share open educational resources addressing public health issues relevant to the region, utilizing information and communication technologies. The VCPH coordinates with the different technical areas of PAHO to develop regional educational proposals, and promotes the establishment of local networks that support the development of educational proposals aligned with technical cooperation that are coordinated through the country nodes.

Since its inception in 2003, the VCPH has progressively enhanced its technological and educational platform under the principles of accessibility and quality. This enabled an effective response during the COVID-19 pandemic and a sustained increase in virtual educational offerings across different modalities, reaching more than 3 million users in the first quarter of 2024.

This series of tutor training seminars forms an integral part of the VCPH’s strategy to enhance teaching capacities for the management of virtual courses that support the PAHO’s agenda for technical cooperation.

Purpose of the seminar series:

• To enhance the competencies and technical capacities of the teaching teams involved in VCPH courses, particularly in virtual tutoring. This also aims to strengthen the quality of the educational proposals in the Moodle Classrooms of the Virtual Campus.
• Understanding the fundamental challenges of virtual teaching and the role of the tutor, enabling participants to adapt and/or modify their practices to provide effective tutoring.
• Integrating resources and activities (particularly forums and assignments) available within the VCPH Virtual Classroom, as teaching and assessment tools, to create meaningful learning experiences and provide continuous support to course participants.
• Analyzing work/collaboration patterns between the teaching teams and the support provided by the technical team of the VCPH, to identify and share experiences and best practices among tutors involved in the courses.

Learning Objectives:
In this training initiative, participants will be able to:

• Recognize the Virtual Campus for Public Health (VCPH) as a strategy for PAHO's technical cooperation.
• Reflect on the role of the tutor and the unique characteristics of teaching within virtual learning environments.
• Acquire knowledge and skills in key aspects of effective tutoring.
• Explore the VCPH virtual classroom, including its activities and resources.
• Discuss the various types of courses offered by the VCPH.
• Utilize basic tools for monitoring and evaluation of participants in VCPH courses.
• Strengthen their teaching practices through the exchange of experiences with peers and the incorporation of new strategies.

Recipients:

• Teaching teams that  will undertake tutoring responsibilities in regional courses and country nodes in the VCPH.
• Coordinators of existing courses within the VCPH or those planning to develop courses in the near future.
• Course coordinators interested in learning more about the role of tutors and aiming to strengthen the competencies of their tutor teams.
• Virtual tutors seeking to strengthen their skills in virtual teaching.

Workload and dedication:
Participants will be required to commit approximately 15 hours in total. This will be distributed in three synchronous Zoom sessions (of 1 hour and 30 minutes each), and 10 hours for asynchronous activities within the virtual classroom.

Structure of the training initiative:
The series of training seminars is organized under a modular structure made up of a space for introduction to the course and familiarization with the virtual classroom and three Learning Modules. The development proposes a progressive advance from familiarization to the Campus, the analysis of the role of tutor, to experimentation with the different resources in Moodle.

It will adopt a hybrid modality, blending synchronous sessions with asynchronous activities to foster autonomous learning in the virtual classroom. There will be 3 synchronous virtual Zoom sessions of 1 hour and a half each. During the sessions, presentations will be made by consultants who provide support and follow-up to the VCPH courses, by the VCPH team, and tools of the Virtual Classroom platform (Moodle) will be shown. These sessions will also include practice opportunities, discussions, and brief workshop-style activities to enhance engagement and participation.

Participants will also have access to a virtual classroom, where they will find all the material, recordings of the sessions, and links, and where they will develop practical activities.

This course is available to selected participants.