E-teachers at work: Exploring a process for reviewing e-teaching for ongoing professional learning (original) (raw)
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On-line teacher communities constitute a very popular and dynamic field while they foster a new philosophy for professional development which is characterised as associative, constructivist, reflective, situated, collaborative, and connectivist. This paper reports on the design and the implementation of a learning community consisted of computer science teachers teaching in primary and secondary public schools (K-9), in Greece. The conceptual and the operational dimensions of the on-line community design framework are presented in detail. The architecture of an integrated platform, developed to support the teacher community, as well as the tools and the features it incorporates are also outlined. Finally, we present the findings of a pilot study concerning teachers’ presence within the community as well as their views and perceptions of community learning. The results provided supportive evidence of the effectiveness of the design framework and revealed important information with regards to critical indicators of teachers’ learning presence within the community, i.e. members’ participation, engagement, interaction and cohesion.
A Reflection on Teachers' Experience as E-Learners
2009
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A Craft of e-Teaching; lessons from the Digital Practitioner Research
In discussing e-learning at ELSE 2013 the question was asked, "shouldn't we be researching e-teaching?" The authors have spent some years doing this, through their Craft of Teaching work (Garnett, Ecclesfield 2011) and the Digital Practitioner Research (Ecclesfield, Rebbeck, Garnett, 2011-13). The Craft of Teaching work came about when the authors were challenged at the iPED 2009 conference on Pedagogies as to what the role of the teacher would be if Web 2.0 tools allowed learners to generate their own learning contexts, as we argued. We answered this at iPED 2010 with "The Open Context Model of Learning and the Craft of Teaching," This was built around the PAH Continuum (Pedagogy, Andragogy, Heutagogy) which argued that teachers needed to develop learner's ability to manage their own learning using their professional and pedagogical understanding of the educational benefits of self-directed learning. The subsequent Digital Practitioner research for the UK skills development agency LSIS both used an original survey methodology, focused on how lecturers felt about the technologies they were using, and also evaluated the answers against professional critical thinking skills. This survey of 1000 college lecturers surprisingly revealed the importance of the personal development of the use of technologies in social contexts as a key part of the development of professional e-teaching skills in educational institutions, and also that a co-creation model of learning (Garnett, Ecclesfield 2012) around "artfully-crafted, student-centred, learning experiences" was possible. The conclusion would be that e-teaching is best developed by a mix of personal, professional and staff development, both within and outside educational institutions, allied with a deeper understanding of how pedagogies are being changed post-Web 2.0, by new learning and social technologies. The paper will show how we reached these conclusions and how institutions might develop new e-teaching strategies for themselves
Computers & education, 2010
This paper argues that if new communications technologies and online spaces are to yield ‘new relationship[s] with learners’ (DfES, 2005, p. 11) then research that is tuned to recognize, capture and explain the pedagogical processes at the centre of such interactions is vital. This has implications for the design of pedagogical activities within Initial Teacher Education (ITE) intended to develop student teachers’ professional knowledge and understanding of e-learning strategies. A case study is presented of an intervention, which attempted to synthesize a face-to-face and online school-based experience with University-based lectures, in order to develop student teachers’ capacity to theorize and reflect upon the development of their online pedagogical practice. Theory that focuses on the complex and symbiotic nature of professional knowledge and learning was developed to analyse data in the form of interviews with student teachers and archived extracts from their online interactions with the children. The aim was to evaluate the effectiveness of a pedagogical-research design based upon the authentic and situated use of e-learning strategies and technologies for developing student teachers’ professional knowledge and understanding of online pedagogy. Ultimately the paper concludes that, from the perspective of a dynamic conceptualisation of e-learning as continuously emerging (Andrews & Haythornthwaite, 2007) then a pedagogical-research design that develops and captures student teachers’ capacity to reflect upon the development of their own online pedagogy and professional knowledge and understanding in relation to e-learning is vital.
The Changing Vision of an e-Teacher: A Retrospective
This paper describes the evolution of a teacher that imparted eleven online courses over a seven year period. Courses were set up with a HTML editor (Front Page) and a LMS system (Moodle), three courses were given to students of two different postgraduate programs and eight on a graduate program. The analysis was based in the teaching practices and the types of media and tools used in each course, the level of interaction with students and the institutional awareness of on-line learning while those courses were imparted. A comparison was made between the changing vision of the teacher and the perceptions of students on each course to try to find a connection between these two and for comparing the increasing level of complexity of each course as the teacher gained confidence and experience imparting these courses in this modality.
Compass: Journal of Learning and Teaching, 2016
This paper seeks to shed light on the hitherto under-researched area of the relationships academics have with their VLE, in particular with regard to reluctance or resistance to move from face-to-face to online practice. While the sector has invested into inquiry around the aspirations and motivations of the digital student (JISC, 2009), the day-to-day digital interactions of staff who teach and support learning, in particular those without technology expertise or natural digital inclinations, have largely gone unrecorded. This paper offers some preliminary findings of a three year action research project investigating attitudes towards virtual learning though a teacher-education lens rather than a traditional technology-training one. Findings have been converted into advice for academics looking to make the shift from face-to-face to e-teaching practice and can be usefully positioned alongside what is already known about the student experience of e-learning.
Peer Observation of Teaching in E-learning environments in UK Universities
Compass: Journal of Learning and Teaching, 2016
Peer observation of teaching (POT) is presented as a valuable mechanism allowing for the dissemination of ‘best practice’ within university teaching. With the rapid rise of online learning courses, it could be expected that POT would be extended to the online environment. In practice, however, it appears that this development is inconsistent. Likewise, there has been little research into the experiences of teachers of online teaching, with research focused more on the technological aspects than on the delivery of teaching. Using a document analysis of a sample of UK universities and interviews with academics to assess a cross section of current institutional practice, this paper explores the intersection between POT and the online delivery of teaching and learning. The findings indicate that POT has not yet become a standard evaluative and/or developmental process in e-learning environments, although some universities do implement it within their CPD or teacher training programmes.
Introduction ew learning technologies are increasingly used in higher education institutions in the developed world. , in an appropriately titled chapter, 'You can't not do it', explain the technology imperative faced by higher education institutions today. Adopting new technologies gives rise to an academic staff development requirement for appropriate pedagogical use of these new opportunities. Teachers need to be encouraged and supported to reconceptualise and prepare their learning activities and resources for a nonlinear, collaborative, flexible environment. At the same time emerging practices need to be informed through appropriate research and evaluation. At Monash University an exemplars WebCT site entitled Designing Electronic Learning and Teaching Approaches (DELTA) has recently been redeveloped by the Educational Design Group in the Centre for Learning & Teaching Support (CeLTS) to showcase electronic learning and teaching resources developed by staff as a means of sharing ideas to improve teaching with technology. This paper explores the context and background of the DELTA site, and describes its main components, before considering some potential roles that showcases of good practice might play in research related to e-learning, especially in the context of distance education.
2014
Staff at the University of Lincoln, UK, are repositioned as students on the virtual learning environment (VLE) for the teacher education programme ‘Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age’ (TELEDA). Modules explore the social relations of virtual learning through a community approach to sharing practice, and using tools like wikis, journals and forums to demonstrate the challenges of digital scholarship enables ‘insider’ knowledge of the craft of e-teaching to be gained through experiential learning. As sector-wide shifts to flexible design and delivery increase, greater attention to the digital confidence and capabilities of staff who teach and support learning is required. Investigating the uncertain spaces between the rhetoric and the reality of teaching online has shaped the author’s doctoral research into digital education. This paper offers emerging research findings which include how experiential approaches like TELEDA are worthy investments of time and resources and reinforce...