The Online Empathy Training Tool (OLETT)

The Online Empathy Training Tool (OLETT) is a three stage simulation activity designed to enable tutors to test their ability to accurately identify emotional subtexts and implicit affective dimensions to emails that might be routinely received by tutors from students and colleagues. It is one of the activities comprising the Empathy Unit which forms part of the e-Educator Module featured in this Special Issue. The first stage of the activity involves asking participants to choose adjectives which best describe the underlying feelings contained within 27 fictitious, but true-to-life emails.This activity is time-constrained to simulate the real-world, real-time pressures experienced by on and off line tutors in higher education (HE). Following completion of the first stage of the activity, participants are invited to compose empathic replies to three of the emails in the light of their interpretations of the underlying feelings. These compositions are then posted for feedback and comment by other members of their learning group. The design methodology for OLETT is discussed and the outcomes ofthe pilot evaluations to date described