Material Detail

Submitter : Sorel Reisman

The rapid growth of computer-mediated schools has created a need for more teachers. Often, the new teachers enjoy taking on new challenges and bring a ?pioneer? attitude with them. It helps to be a visionary when tackling new educational problems such as creating lectures that have substance and are interesting for students to read. A real problem is that the literature on teaching online is just developing and sometimes people are forced to speculate on particular teaching and learning problems due to the absence of research studies.

Yet, contemporary learners often have legitimate instructional needs and vary greatly in their academic abilities. Hannafin, Land, and Hill (1997) related concerns that most learners lack the substantial self-monitoring skills that distance education requires. They recommended that students need more academic support from their peers and teachers. Learners must be empowered through thoughtful interaction to acquire the necessary skills to effectively work in an open-ended environment. Distance education places fewer restrictions on learners (e.g. often no set time to learn), and learners must take greater responsibility for their educational experiences. Frequently, learners are under major time constraints with work and family obligations and being efficient with their graduate studies is an important issue.

This paper first presents a brief overview of several important philosophical principles that offer a foundation for the online teaching and learning process; it then focuses on strategies and principles that will help online teachers to be creative and effective teachers.

Browse in Categories:

- Academic Support Services / Faculty Development / Teaching Strategies