As an online teacher, close adherence to instructor best practices and expectations ensures a successful outcome of the learning process, which is rewarding to both the teacher and learner alike. BEST PRACTICES: Instructor The online instructor must actively participate in all dimensions of the online classroom.
Best practice 4 Use a variety of large group, small group, and individual work experiences. Best practice 5 Use synchronous and asynchronous activities. Best practice 6 Ask for informal feedback early in the term. Best practice 7 Prepare discussion posts that invite responses, questions, discussions, and reflections.
Standard Text: Select all that apply. 1. A learning object is an entity or learning event. 2. A learning object teaches an online lesson. 3. A learning object describes the usefulness of the Internet. 4. A learning object is embedded in HTML mark ups.
Which of the following statements is true about the differences between training and development? (a) Training is future-oriented, while development focuses more on present issues. (b) Training focuses on preparing employees for current jobs, but development prepares them for other positions. (c) Use of work experiences is greater in training ...
Why is presence so important in the online environment? When faculty actively interact and engage students in a face-to-face classroom, the class evolves as a group and develops intellectual and personal bonds . The same type of community bonding happens in an online setting if the faculty presence is felt consistently. Regular, thoughtful, daily presence shows the students that the faculty member cares about who they are, cares about their questions and concerns, and is generally present for them to do the mentoring, guiding, and challenging that teaching is all about. In other words, text and audio presence compensate for the physical remoteness of online learning and the lack of face-to-face presence.
Some institutions with large online programs have a policy that faculty are expected to respond to learners within twenty-four hours during the week. Expectations for responses during the weekend can vary, but as most working professionals work on their online courses during the weekend, faculty should establish a general rule as to weekend windows of opportunity.
One way to create a sense of presence without it consuming too much time is to focus discussions on the course site and avoid one-to-one e-mails. Time-released announcements that remind learners of assignment due dates and prepared audio containing additional content that can be swiftly uploaded midweek are other ways to let the learners know you are there.
Liberal use of tools, such as announcements, discussion board postings, and faculty blogs, lets students know just when the faculty member will likely be present for fast turnaround on questions and potentially available for live interaction by phone or collaborative online tools. These same tools can communicate when the faculty member may be away for an extended time-say, two days or more. Strategies such as assigning a student or a team of two students to monitor question forums or blogs can also be a good stand-in for the facility presence for a day or two and create community support and networking connections.
Research on faculty presence suggests that there are three types of presence: social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence . (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000). More about these types of presence are in the tips in Part Two.
One posted message from students that you do not want on your site is the question, "Is anybody there?" Such a posting would be made only by a student who is feeling abandoned, alone, and isolated-a clear and unambiguous signal that not all is well.
Thus, one of the most important expectations for online faculty is-if at all possible-to be present in some way every day. These expectations can be modified, and students will be very accepting if their faculty clearly states personal policies on presence and provides notice if family or professional events cause deviation from these policies.
Provide staff with assistance, for example an eLearning Coordinator, who is a technology champion and consults on the best way that technology could contribute to the quality of teaching, eLearning experiences, and assessment.
We first need to consider the learning outcomes sought, political landscape, technology constraints/opportunities, resourcing, and general organizational readiness. Just by its nature, technology adaption brings with it a lot of organizational change issues. Change is a given if we do not simply want to replicate our old ways of doing things in a digital environment. Of course this approach would not be advantageous. Challenges will be met; therefore, we need to be ready for the disruption change can (will) bring to our organizations when introducing a comprehensive eLearning strategy.
As addressed above, a rapid changing landscape of ongoing digital transformation puts new requirements on teaching staff. Change is often initiated by school administrators, not the teaching staff themselves. The change that occurs from technology introduction can often result in resistance as people react to possible loss of status, loss of pay, or loss of comfort. New ways of working puts requirements on new competences and a continuous learning and development. And, teaching staff do not have time to produce eLearning content. Both issues that can lead to resistance to the change. However, with the right support mechanisms many implementation challenges can be overcome. My research identified a number of non-technical best practice actions that support successful eLearning implementation:
In encouraging problem solving for deeper learning, problems provided to learners need to be within context and in-line with the stretch-abilities / skills of the learner. Setting a goal too high will demotivate whilst setting a goal too low will do the same. Understanding the learning outcomes helps us set the difficulty of the problem to be solved. Educational technology can help us here as well. For example, a pre-test to diagnose students’ prior knowledge could be administered in a Learning Management System (LMS) as a ‘placement test’; the results could trigger different outcomes. Fail the test, for example, and be automatically booked on an easier foundation or bridging course; pass the test and progress along the intended learner journey. Such a diagnostic testing component can identify possible knowledge gaps and unlock suitable bridging courses to target those gaps. Different learning journeys and learning-logic can place the learner in a ‘correct spot’ in their learning journey, for example, navigate the learner to ‘jump to’ an area/item or go to a ‘restricted area’. If questions are answered incorrectly a ‘jump to’ the start of the course action can be initiated so that the learner has to study the content again. Elements can also be retrieved from a restricted area, for example after successfully passing an exam, or, if a lesson needs to be completed in a specific sequence.
A decrease in communication costs has powered outsourcing of business processes on a global scale.
It protects the data and information assets of the company.
Analyzing a website visitor report from several pro-anorexia blogs to determine the popularity of each blog. Access to the blogs is not restricted.
The investigator uses the informed consent process to explain her institution's method for guaranteeing absolute confidentiality of research data.
One of these risks is: Recruiting, consenting and debriefing subjects takes place on-line, and may require little to no interaction with the subjects. People assume pseudonymous on-line identities, such as an avatar in an MMORPG.
Individuals may post private identifiable information about themselves on-line without intending it to be public and available to researchers.
Researchers endeavoring to conduct an on-line study should consider that there are some potential risks of harm to subjects unique to internet-based research . One of these risks is:
Respondents are informed that investigators will try to keep their participation confidential; however, confidentiality cannot be assured.
1. A learning object is an entity or learning event.
A three credit baccalaureate course meets four hours a week in the classroom and three hours per week through Blackboard. This is considered what type of learning environment?
To convince top management of the benefits of e-learning implementation, do a side-by-side analysis of the cost of delivering one hour of e-learning versus a classroom session. Compare the costs for an hour of trainer time, learner time, travel costs, opportunity costs, and loss of productivity with the development cost of one hour of e-learning.
Department heads must be made to understand the e-learning plans for their group and more importantly, their role in implementing them successfully so they can communicate them to their teams. Communication between management and employees must be continuous and feedback mechanisms are important to iron out issues.
Personal barriers: Employees unwilling to take responsibility for their own learning and their resistance to change.
There are seven important readiness factors you must consider before implementing e-learning – psychological, social, environmental, human resource, technological, financial, and content readiness. Let’s take a brief look at each factor.
Identify your e-learning needs. As a first step, identify your training needs that can be met with e-learning. Then assess how far these training needs are aligned to your business goals, which may be cutting costs or reaching your sales goals, to justify the investment in e-learning. 2.
Feedback from employees and department heads on a regular basis will help gauge the success of the initiative. Evaluation of employees with realistic goals and success criteria will help measure the effectiveness and know what works and what does not in the program. This will help make changes to the program.
To identify e-learning needs, you must have a formal process of collecting and documenting the training needs. Specific surveys and feedback forms filled by employees and the management will help you identify their training needs and opinions on e-learning.