Online Teaching

Michael Feldstein, e-learning consultant, in one of his blog posts stated that:

Undoubtedly, the "sage on the stage" will morph into the "guide on the side" in an online environment. Online tools, and especially the Internet, offer endless possibilities for instructors to stimulate learners and engage them in active learning processes. Online teaching is underpinned by a different pedagogical paradigm, where learning is learner-centred and learners are engaged in active learning experiences that guide them through critical thinking and the construction of meaning as they interact with the world around them and their peers. Instructors become the guides on the side as they monitor the learning experience and intervene as guidance is necessary. However, fostering learning online is no easy task. Instructors need to tap into the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of their learners to keep them engaged.

The following resources share best practices in online teaching and offer a number of strategies and tips to teach effectively in online and blended environments.

Fostering Learning Online

Fostering meaningful learning online requires an understanding of online learners and their motivation to learn.

Motivation

Keller (1991) stated that to keep learners motivated to learn instructors need to:

1. gain learners attention: to gain attention you can use different instructional techniques, such as discovery learning, videoquests, twitter discussions. One other way of gaining attention may be to centre a discussion around something controversial, but relevant to the learning (e.g. newspaper articles about safety if you are teaching carpentry)
2. make the content relevant: use examples and design activities that are contextual and relevant to the learners (e.g. if you are teaching auto mechanics, come up with activities that will involved fixing car breaks)
3. ensure learners are confident that they can succeed in learning the course content: make sure that all activities and assessments are "doable" and present your content in manageable chunks
4. satisfy the learners’ need for value in learning the material: provide timely and frequent feedback to your learners so that they have a sense of accomplishment.

Online Facilitation

The ARCS model applies not only to online course design but also to online facilitation of learning, through discussions, for example.

Tips for online facilitation

• Instructor presence: Make sure your presence as an instructor is felt throughout the course. Not just in the content you create, but also when you facilitate discussions. This doens't mean that you have to respond to every single post in the discussions, Quite the opposite - you will get more value for your postings when you post when necessary to provide guidance or to re-assure learners that they are on the right track.
• Weaving: Use the 'weaving' technique to recognize learners' contributions to the discussion, to link key concepts discussed and to pose further questions if appropriate. Weaving through contributions is an example of extrinsic motivation and may result in subsequent postings. 'Weaving' technique is based on a single reply to several postings and creates opportunities for the instructor to guide the direction of the discussions, to summarize the main points or to pose further questions to delve deeper into a topic.
• Summarizing: Summarizing the main themes that surface in a discussion helps consolidate the learning and establish a connection with the content. You can do the summaries yourself, however, consider assigning the task to learners as a way to further engage them in the discussion. This can be done in the form of 'homework' and can be for marks or not.
• Guest speakers: Bringing guest speakers to participate in your online discussions brings relevance to your topic and encourages learner engagement.
• Debates: Debates are a good way to explore topics through polarization. Debates tend to be engaging by nature, as you prompt learners to take a position on a topic. Typically, for an online debate, you split your class into two groups and assign them a position (in favour or against).
• Examples: Integrate relevant examples in your posts whenever possible. It makes the posting relevant and provides learners' with context.

The following resources provide best practices and tips for the facilitation of online discussions

Engaging in Discussions

When teaching in an online and blended environment, asynchronous discussions are a good way to keep your learners actively engaged in the learning process. However, discussions can also be a burden for students, especially if they are over-used in a course and if your students are taking multiple online courses. 'Discussion fatigue' is an online course syndrome caused by too many discussion forums in a course with minimum posting requirements. In these cases, the result you get is that learners become passively engaged and make postings because they have to, especially if the discussion mark counts towards the final grade.

So what is too much? Well, like in any teaching and learning, there is no right or wrong answer. It depends on the course design, the course content (sometimes courses are taught based on discussions) and on the learner circumstances (if you know that your learners are enrolled in a full-time program of study, perhaps it may be best to check on the participation requirements of other courses and keep the requirements for your own course in check). Having said this, a good rule of thumb is to make sure that you keep your students engaged by having them come to the course site to participate at least every two weeks. So, in a 10 week course you may have four or five discussions.

Keeping Learners Engaged

Here are a few strategies that you can use to keep your students engaged in the discussion activities:

Use students to lead the discussion:

• Have students synthesize the weekly postings.
• Have students suggest a relevant topic discussion and let them moderate. Students may submit one question to you via e-mail for consideration. You select the question that is most relevant and have the student who submitted the question be the moderator for that discussion.
• Assign a group to be the experts on a topic or section. Have them post a question for discussion and lead the discussion. Toward the end of the class discussion, have the discussion leaders summarize and combine points for their classmates.

Promote interaction:

• Create debates by having students take sides on an issue and defend their positions. In blended environments you may poll students in class on a particular topic. Then you can have students support their positions in the online discussion area.
• Post a number of questions relating to a course topic. Assign students to work in small groups on these questions. Each group will then post their final results to the discussion.
• In blended environments, post a discussion question related to course readings prior to the in-class discussion. You can use comments from the online discussion to generate in-class discussion. This will help students prepare for the face-to-face discussion.

Regardless of how engaged students are, make sure that you always post a summary or conclusion to the discussion thread, and remember that this can take the form of homework for students!

Before Your Course Starts

So... your course is ready to go: all content is up, all activities have been developed, all assignments are ready... It is now time to write a module that will orient learners to the course.

The Orientation Module

The purpose fo the orientation module is to ensure that students have all the information about the course in one place. This modules should include sections about:

The Introduction E-mail

One week before the course starts, you should send an introduction email to all the enrolled students in your course. The purpose of this email is to let yous students know how to login and what to expect of teh course. It is also a great way to establish a connection with the learners as you provide them with some information about yourself as the tutor/instructor.