Videotutoring, non-verbal communication and initial teacher training

Telematics has the potential to transform Higher Education through creating a distributed community of tutors and students. Videotutoring is central t o telematics. enabling personal tutoring to occur at a distance. Within the context of a post-graduate teacher training course, videotutoring was used to tutor two students during the first six weeks of their first full-time school placement. Both ends of the videosignal were recorded. Analysis of t he tapes used a protocol based upon research into non-verbal communication (NVC), NVC is as important as verbal communication in the tutorial process. Findings suggest that the interaction of participants mediated through the screen was significantly different from face-to-face communication in rela tion to the two-dimensional image of the screen and the "viewing frame" eff ect of the physical boundaries of the image, The viewing frame literally se rved as the proscenium arch of a theatre, Two-dimensionality and the viewin g frame effect emphasised both the positive and negative elements in inter- personal communication as represented in Argyle's social skills and Goffman 's theatrical models. The conclusion is that videotutoring can potentially be a more effective form of tutoring than face-to-face interaction.