LEARNING AND TEACHING ONLINE
There are numerous
definitions of online learning in the literature, definitions that reflect the
diversity of practice and associated technologies. Carliner (1999) defines
online learning as educational material that is
presented on a computer. Khan (1997) defines online instruction as an
innovative approach to delivering instruction to a remote
audience, using the Web as the medium.
However, online learning
involves more than just the presentation and distribution of the materials
using the Web: the learner and the learning process should be the focus of
online learning.
Teaching face-to-face
and teaching online are both teaching, but they are qualitatively
different.Online education starts when
faculty move from the traditional classroom to the online classroom. There are
some things that the two have in common, but there are also plenty of
differences.
- The online teacher plays the role of guiding students through one or more online learning experiences. These experiences are every so often designed and planned long before the course starts so that the teacher can devote more time to guiding the students and less time preparing lessons. Within this role, the teacher directs and redirects the attention of learners toward fundamental concepts and ideas.
- Learning is hard work and studying online can sometimes feel isolating, confusing, or discouraging without the guide.
As
a result, the effective online teacher makes intentional efforts to communicate
precise encouraging messages to individual learners and the group as a whole.
Moreover, even when providing constructive feedback, the teacher as supporter
finds a way to promote positive messages alongside the critiques. Encouragement
and welcoming support are an important approach to maintaining an overall positive
morale in the class. At times, learners may fall into negative comments about
themselves, the class, or their classmates (even the instructor, on occasion).
The coach makes every effort to find ways to listen, respect the learner’s
frustrations, but also to help them reframe the situation in a manner that
students are more active and creative.
- Many people focus on the role of the teacher as role model, and that is valuable. However, the role of the coach is just as important, even more, important if we want learners to develop high levels of competence and confidence. The online teacher must move beyond just modeling a depth motivation for the subject and personal skill with the content. The mentor needs to find ways to hand the matter over to the students to do something with it. Applied projects and papers work well for this, and it gives the teacher an opportunity to be a coach and advisor.
- Learners need some feedback about their work. How are they doing? Are they getting closer to meeting the learning objectives or not? The effective online teacher finds ways to give thoughtful feedback to individual learners and, when appropriate, groups of students.
- Without intentional efforts to build a positive social environment, online learning can feel lonely and impersonal. As a result, the online teacher must serve as an encouraging host, facilitating introductions, using discussion starters to enable conversations among students, and taking the time to get to know students and referencing that knowledge in interactions with them.
- The whole thing is documented in an online course. The teacher can tell when and how many times a student logs into the course, what pages were viewed or not, how many discussions posts the student contributed, and much more. This data can be abused, but it can also be used to make adjustments and informed decisions by an online teacher. If a student is not logging in or failing to visit pages in the course with the direct instructions, the coach points that out to the learners or reorganizes the content so that it is easier to find.
- Online courses are rich with content and sometimes students can get lost in all that content. The teacher as regulator intentionally releases content in chunks that are appropriate for students. Sometimes this comes in the form of only publishing content one week at a time. Other times, the teacher releases it all at once but directs students only to focus on individual parts at a time. Another key is to break content into smaller segments. Rather than a twenty-page document of instructions, it is better to consider breaking it into ten two-page documents.
- Good teachers are lifelong learners, and they can model that learning for their students in a variety of ways in the online classroom. The teacher can be active (but not too active or it will silence students) participant in online discussions, sharing what they are learning about the subject, and even complete all or fragments of some assignments, sharing their work with the students. The procedure goes a long way in building an exciting and dynamic online learning community where one and all in the community commits to exemplifying the qualities of a lifelong learner.
