Introduction: The e-Educator Training Module

This is the second issue of the Malaysian Journal of Distance Education devoted to aspects of the two phases of the e-Educator training project. The introduction to the December 2008 issue provides an overview of the project and its rationale. For the convenience of readers of this June 2009 issue this introductory article will again provide a brief outline of the proj ect which began with phase one in 2005-2006 involving a collaboration between the University of Nottingham, UK and Beiwai Online at Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing, China to develop a generic training module for tutors who support students on online courses. The rationale behind the decision to develop a generic module is briefly covered as well as the decision to develop this module with online tutors in China and then to pilot this with distance learning tutors in Malaysia in phase 2 of the project. This is followed by an introduction to the articles within Special Issue of this journal that covers the development process, some of innovative tools within the module and the research surrounding the development and implementation