Becoming an Effective Online Teacher

Organization of the online learning process requires a lot of important decisions. What activities to do synchronously, what activities to do asynchronously, what interventions to make to facilitate and not direct or assign, how to stimulate engagement and independent inquiry? That is indeed a big challenge.  What do we have so far? Video and reading materials designed and placed in the information repository ("FOLDERS"), organised by lessons. Students signed up and organised into groups. A welcome post inclusive of instructions on how to navigate on the platform posted, although the navigation is relatively simple, identical to Facebook.  There are several objectives we as the teachers should pursue: 1. Facilitate inquiry and engagement with the video and reading materials placed in the repository.  2. Facilitate communication and connection amongst students and other participants (knowledge hubs), inclding the teachers and mentors.  3. Track student progress and ad...

Organization and design of activities largely determines the effectiveness of learning and, therefore, needs to closely reflect the current perspectives on the theory of knowledge and learning process.  Although connectivists do not clearly define the role of teachers in learning and knowledge creation, placing the focus on the individual and the network, as well as the flow of information (Bates, 2019), it seems obvious that to avoid chaos, there is a need for a teacher to provide the framework for the inquiry channels, to facilitate the establishment and growth of networks and the exchange of information across, and to facilitate practice and reflection in learners.  Siemens (2005) confirms that the " Knowledge that resides in a database needs to be connected with the right people in the right context in order to be classified as learning." According to the author within social networks, well-connected people serve as so-called hubs to foster and maintain knowledge flow...

In my own teaching practice and learning for professional development purposes I have had to deal with a range of learning management platforms. Edmodo contrasted substantially against the more commonly used LMS systems such as Blackboard, Canvas or Moodle.  The interface looked extremely simple and that was appealing. When teaching online, the last thing you want is to put off students' engagement by the complexity of the learning environment.  And of course there was the Edmodo app. That simplifies things even further.  The other feature that appealed to me was "the wall". The wall called for teacher and student posts, replies, likes, questions - INTERACTIVITY! COMMUNICATION! I always felt like the other platforms, although had the capacity to support forums and discussions, lacked teacher-student, student-student interaction. The teacher had to create prompts for it and then students deal with them like another piece of assignment - they have to leave a few comments, t...

Much of the global success of online learning can be attributed to the merits of Learning Management systems (LMS), also known as  learning platforms and virtual learning environments (Paulsen and Keegan, 2002). What an academic can do, how he/she can organize the course, all the capabilities are determined by the functionality of the Learning Management System. Offering access to learning materials and integration of the digital content are quite standard across the LMS.  Brandon-hall.com defines an LMS as a: "software that automates the administration of training events. An LMS registers users, tracks courses in a catalogue, and records data from learners; it also provides reports to management. An LMS is typically designed to handle courses by multiple publishers and multiple providers." Meanwhile, synchronous and asynchronous student-to-student and teacher-to-student interactivity, assessment mechanisms, tracking services, ability to integrate other, external tools - ...

  My personal journey in designing an online course started in July 2020 with the need to prepare an online Orientation programme for the September 2020 intake of new students. Roughly 1,000 new students to join the University's Level 3 Foundation course. To understand the scope of the challenge you would have to have an understanding of the environment and my background.  On the positive side, I am a Gen Xer. I am one of the members of faculty keen to use innovative tools in the classroom to enhance the learning experience and engagement of students. Regular participant of the T&L Symposium with the primary aim of gaining insights into the latest advancements and discoveries of my colleagues and sharing my own. Kahoot!, Padlet, Moodle - yes of course! I am keen to learn and am comfortable with a lot of the online learning tools. Have I used the LMS to its fullest? Yes. As much as Intranet, our in-house developed LMS, could offer. Zoom? Yes. Have I run a fully online cours...

22 years ago I opened my first e-mail account. There were no search engines that I knew of at the time. Yahoo! and Hotmail were the two most popular e-mail services, which did not have search engines yet.  About two years later I saw the first Webster online course ad. Kentnor (2015) notes that online courses started appearing in the United States in early 1990s, but saw rapid growth in the late years of the decade. By 2002, over 1.6 million students were enrolled in online tertiary courses, and another 6 years later the numbers nearly tripled (Allen & Seaman, 2008 cited in Kentnor, 2015). As a prospective university student at the time, quite keen on doing an undergraduate degree in the US, I remember being very skeptical about it. To be fair an online degree was very different then. It was more like distance education, a degree by correspondence. The effectiveness of online degrees was questioned by employers (Columbaro and Monaghan, 2009).  Nearly two dec...