Online Teaching and Learning
With enrollments up in the UW Colleges Online Program and an increase of campus offerings of hybrid or blended courses in which the learning environment is equally divided between face-to-face (F2F) and online (OL), attention to effective online teaching and learning is critical. This white paper will highlight some of the research-based best practices for effective online teaching and learning.
Why Online? A 2010 US Department of Education meta-analysis of online learning research found that "Students in online conditions performed modestly better, on average, than those learning the same material through traditional face-to-face instruction"--with the caveat that the effect may be due to variables other than the actual delivery mode, such as the availability of additional content materials, the extra time provided by asynchronous work, and the increased collaboration possible in online conditions. In other words, it's not the technology itself but instead the effective adaptation of certain teaching and learning principles to the online environment. The Teaching Professor's Faculty Focus site run by Maryellen Weimer offers a handful of reports, white papers, and online seminars on online teaching and learning. Many of them focus on recommendations about course design and management since these fundamentals are decided first with tremendous effects on the entire semester (course design) and are the most challenging for workload and student satisfaction (course management). Take, for instance, this outline of some basic "core competencies" for teaching online (Ragan), or this short list of tips for providing "media richness" to increase student engagement and interaction (Schiefelbein), both of which provide sound advice for online teaching. Additionally, the ideas in the report "10 Principles of Effective Online Teaching"--taken together--reflect a broader picture of the effective online teacher as one who is organized with the online environment, clear in course materials and communications, and present but not overly present: 1. Show Up and Teach: Resist the pressure to be available to students 24/7, both because it leads to burnout for you and unrealistic expectations and passivity from students. Instead, establish a time when you'll teach your online class, and be visible when you do so to prevent the alternative impression that the course is canned and instructorless. As the F2F classroom has "a defined set of parameters including a time and location for both instructor and learner," an online classroom should provide clear parameters as well (6). 2. Practice Proactive Course Management Strategies: Set up your course to offer clear assignment expectations and deadlines available in numerous locations, monitor submissions, and proactively respond to student work (or the absence thereof), keeping in mind that the goal is not to make the students dependent on your reminders but instead to "empower online learners to take responsibility for managing their own learning experience and free instructors to concentrate their time and energy on crafting a truly engaged learning experience" (8). 3. Establish Patterns of Course Activities: Simulate F2F courses in the sense of creating a routine or set of routines for class activities to "define the boundaries between the online class activities and the rest of life," so both student and instructor can devote a defined amount of time to this course and the rest to other responsibilities and life. Examples include providing start- and end-times for all activities, consistent routines and sequences, and a clear rhythm to the course. 4. Plan for the Unplanned: "Life happens," so have a clear location for announcing changes to the course schedule or deadlines as you remain flexible in the face of learner needs, crisis, or other just-in-time issues (12). 5. Response Requested and Expected: Building on the above, establish and communicate a reasonable amount of time in which you'll respond to student queries. A common expectation is 24 hours during the week. Whether you'll respond to students on weekends is up to you. 6. Think Before You Write: We all know the problems that can come from writing emails or e-messages too quickly or with an ambiguous tone, so learn, follow, and share the rules of Netiquette, adding any additional guidelines you want for communication in your online classroom. Use and teach this habit of reflecting and carefully composing thoughts before hitting "send" or "post." 7. Help Maintain Forward Progress: Establish and communicate the (reasonable) timeframe within which you'll return graded assignments, enabling students "to monitor and plan their course activity and, if necessary, take corrective action" (18). 8. Safe and Secure: Keep all communications with your online students in the course management system: password-protected, archived, and organized for easy access. 9. Quality Counts: Invite colleagues to visit and give feedback to your course, and ask students for anonymous mid- and end-of-semester course feedback (such as the Muddiest Point classroom assessment technique, or "What is helping you learn? What is preventing you from learning?"). 10. (Double) Click a Mile on My Connection: Make sure you have at least the same or higher technological capability as the students, so you don't experience unnecessary frustration with the course technology and so you can set up, test, and fix the technology when needed. Best Practices: Learning Activities Individual vs. Collaborative Learning ![]() Instead of a model resembling correspondence courses in which students work individually and through asynchronous interactions with just the instructor, providing opportunities for collaboration helps students perform better online. The report "Student Collaboration in the Online Classroom" offers a variety of strategies for setting up, facilitating, and assessing effective online group activities, as well as the underlying assumptions for collaborative learning. Collaborative Learning Techniques (Barkley, Cross, and Major, 2004) is a rich resource for effectively structuring collaborative learning in general and includes frequent explanations for how to adapt specific collaborative learning techniques to the online environment. | Learner Reflection and Self-Monitoring
Best Practices: Your Conceptual Framework for Online Teaching and Learning Aside from course design, classroom management, and specific learning activities, the actual pedagogies--the deliberate application of a teaching philosophy--that are most effective online are more elusive in the research. Below are some ideas to prompt reflection on your pedagogies and ways of adapting them most effectively to the online environment. The Department of Education's "Conceptual Framework for Online Learning" table to the right is a useful starting place. (Click the image to view it in a larger, legible format.) It illustrates three different kinds of learning experiences (left column) created by different activities (right columns). Think about the ways of thinking required by your discipline and how you thus want your students to practice and demonstrate their learning. Consider what kind of learning environment you want to create. Should you be more expository, or lecture-based? Should you strive for active learning by your students? Should you expect student interaction to be a source of their knowledge construction? The table shows what each of these approaches to teaching and learning might look like online. An article by Nancy Chick and Holly Hassel (2009) also provides a framework for thinking through your pedagogy and how you can bring it online effectively. While we focus specifically on feminist pedagogy, the model we provide can easily be adapted to the characteristics of teaching and learning you want to cultivate in your online classroom:
In the end, effective online teaching comes from first considering what we know about good teaching and student learning--and then adapting these principles to the online environment by making the technology work for us, rather than starting with technology without sound pedagogical reasons for what we do with the technology.For Further Study, Reflection, and/or Discussion
|