Online teaching

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Foundation Skills
Online learning
What is online pedagogy?Objectives  |  Definitions  |  Online teaching  |  Summary



Before anyone can teach effectively online, a number of concepts need to be explored. What constitutes quality online learning? How can the learning environment be designed to support and engage learners? What type of learning experience does the teacher need to create? Which educational technologies will be most appropriate? Who are the learners and what do they need to learn?


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Once upon a time, teachers thought that all they needed to do was to take the materials and methods that they used in the physical classroom, and put them online, either on a website, or in a Learning Management System. In the early days, teachers either 'dumped' screeds of lecture notes online or spent large amounts of time creating presentations using Powerpoint and uploading them. In my experience, many teachers overwhelmed their learners with large volumes of text-based content, links to lots of websites to look at and excessive numbers of readings. So much so, that Tony Bates developed a formula to help teachers estimate the workloads of students exposed to such enthusiastic delivery of information. It's not easy finding the right balance.

Tony Bates has since written a free and open book to guide teachers: Teaching in a digital age (2016). It is invaluable for assisting teachers to design and implement high quality online learning. As a result of the unfamiliarity of online learning, and the many 'hit and miss' approaches that appeared initially, much was written about benchmarks and how to measure quality.


Quality in online learning and teaching

A homegrown system called the eLearning Guidelines was developed collaboratively in 2005 by a group of early innovators. These were updated in 2012, as part of an Ako Aotearoa-funded project. This system can be used to guide good practice in designing eLearning (also called online learning and teaching) from the perspective of learners, teachers, managers, organisational leaders and quality assurance bodies. Each set of guidelines is presented as a series of questions about designing, implementing and enhancing elearning. For example, a teacher might select a guideline such as: "TD 6: Is there a high level of interaction designed for, structured and supported?" (eLearning Guidelines, n.d.)


Tony Bates (2016) defines quality as: "teaching methods that successfully help learners develop the knowledge and skills they will require in a digital age" (p. 368).
by Karolina Grabowska


Interaction in an online course is considered key to successful learning.
What does this mean? Consider, learner–teacher, learner–content, and learner–learner type interactions; these three areas are core to any learning experience, particularly when online (Garrison, 2005). Why? Because students who learn online need a number of things to be in place if their experience is to be enjoyable, interesting, motivating and useful. They need interactions that provide:
  1. easy access to material in a variety of media to help the subject 'come alive' (learner-content);
  2. other learners who can share information and ideas (social learning) (learner-learner); and
  3. guidance from clear instructions and a knowledgeable facilitator (learner-teacher).

Even so, interactions do not necessarily ensure cognitive engagement in learning and need to be designed carefully. Firstly, teachers need to think carefully about how to engage their learners, and before they can do this they need to understand what engagement means. Is it the interest students have in a topic? Is it how they tackle their study? Yes, is the answer to these questions but there is more. Zepke and Leach's (2010) ten proposals for action for engagement are listed.

  1. Enhance students’ self-belief.
  2. Enable students to work autonomously, enjoy learning relationships with others and feel they are competent to achieve their own objectives.
  3. Recognize that teaching and teachers are central to engagement.
  4. Create learning that is active, collaborative and fosters learning relationships.
  5. Create educational experiences for students that are challenging, enriching and extend their academic abilities.
  6. Ensure institutional cultures are welcoming to students from diverse backgrounds.
  7. Invest in a variety of support services.
  8. Adapt to changing student expectations.
  9. Enable students to become active citizens.
  10. Enable students to develop their social and cultural capital (p. 169).


Note that the involvement of teachers and the support they provide in guiding learning is considered key to engagement. If you wish to read about the research underpinning these actions, the article can be sourced using the full reference below or found on Moodle. Motivation plays a huge part in engagement as does self-efficacy (belief in yourself), self-managed learning and autonomy (Hartnett, 2016; Zepke, Leach & Butler, 2012). When students are learning in an online environment, transactional distance (separation or isolation experienced by students) is strongly influenced by the degree of structure and interaction built into the design of a course (Hartnett, 2016). More often than not this relies on a strong teaching presence, and this can 'make or break' online learning (Garrison,& Cleveland-Innes, 2005).



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Activity

1. Read Bill Pelz's (2004) three principles of effective online pedagogy.

  • Which principles do you like and why?

2. Select an online course that you teach or a colleague teaches.

  • What would you do to enhance engagement, and minimize transactional distance in the online course?
  • Identify the issues with the approaches used in the course.
  • Outline what needs to change?
  • Describe at least two strategies you could implement to improve students' learning.
  • Explain why you believe (based on your reading) the strategies would enhance the quality of the learning experience.
  • Post your responses to your portfolio and share on the discussion forum.




References
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