4.4 Participate in an online teaching community

What to do?

How to do it?

• Communicate with a colleague who has experience with or is teaching online to talk about the related challenges, successes, or other issues.
• Join a listserv or sign up for newsletters discussing teaching online.
• Participate in training courses, workshops, or seminars about teaching online.
• Talk with an instructional designer for teaching strategies/ideas
• Consult individually with instructional design staff at your institution
• Investigate institutional support provided by the college or online program.

Why do it?

Faculty may not want to teach future online courses if adequate technical support was lacking in their first online teaching experience (Lao&Gonzales, 2005).

Koehler, Mishra, Hershey,&Peruski (2004) suggest that traditional workshops, tutorials, and technical support groups are over-simplified approaches to dealing with the complex relationships between content, technology, and pedagogy. Their study proposes the use of design team approach and considers content, technology, and pedagogy as dependent on one another.

Faculty who teach online courses need to feel supported when dealing with course and student issues (Palloff&Pratt, 2001).

References:

Koehler, M.J., Mishra, P., Hershey, K.,&Peruski, L. (2004). With a little help from your students: A new model for faculty development and online course design. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 12(1) , 25-55

Lao, T.&Gonzales, C. (2005). Understanding online learning through a qualitative description of professors and students’ experiences. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 13(3) , 459-474

Pallott, R.M.,&Pratt, K. (2001). Lessons from the cyberspace classroom: The realities of online teaching . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.