Lesson 9 - Quality Teaching in a Digital Age

Key takeaways from this lesson are:

• In this course, quality is defined as, “Teaching methods that successfully help learners develop the knowledge and skills they will require in the digital age.”
• Formal national and institutional quality assurance processes do not guarantee quality teaching and learning. In particular, they focus more on past ‘best’ practices, processes to be done before actual teaching, and often ignore the affective, emotional, or personal aspects of learning. Also, they do not focus particularly on the needs of learners in the digital age.
• New technologies and the needs of learners in the digital age require a re-thinking of traditional campus-based teaching, especially where it has been based mainly on the transmission of knowledge. This means re-assessing the way you teach and determining how you would really like to teach in the digital age. This requires imagination and vision rather than technical expertise.
• Blended and especially fully online learning require a range of skills that most instructors are unlikely to have. Good course design not only enables students to learn better but also controls faculty workload. Courses look better with good graphic and web design and professional video production. Specialist technical help frees up instructors to concentrate on the knowledge and skills that students need to develop.
  
• Make the optimum use of existing resources, including institutionally-supported learning technologies, open educational resources (OER), learning technology staff, and the experience of your colleagues.
• Regular and on-going instructor/teacher presence, especially when students are studying partly or wholly online, is essential for student success. This means effective communication between teacher/instructor and students. It is particularly important to encourage inter-student communication, either face-to-face or online.
  
• The new learning goals of re-designed courses should be aimed at developing the knowledge and skills needed in the digital age. The re-designed courses should be carefully evaluated in their goal achievement and the ways in which the courses could be improved should be identified.