Online learning: Transcending the physical (original) (raw)

From ‘Good Teaching’ to ‘Better Teaching’: One Academic’s Journey to Online Teaching

Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, 2016

For many educators, the adoption of learning technologies as part of a ‘technology-enhanced’ approach to learning and teaching implies change. Technology takes on a disruptive role. Therefore, it is important to understand the pedagogical commitments associated with current practices in order to better understand any change implied by the use of particular technology ‘enhancements’. This article reports on a case study of the change experienced by one tertiary educator in the shift from successful on campus to flexible online teaching in an undergraduate Numeracy course. The study addresses the question: How do teaching academics translate a robust, proven on-campus course into a successful, flexibly delivered technology-enhanced course? The case employs an autoethnographic approach to recording and analysing the educator’s experiences to highlight comparisons between on-campus (face-to-face) and online teaching practices. The findings support the conclusion that ‘good teaching is g...

The Changing Dynamics of Online Education: Five Theses on the Future of Learning 1

These are times of unprecedented change in education. Digitally-mediated online education looms large as one of the most significant harbingers change. Potentially, for better or for worse, no classroom and no formal or informal learning process will be left unchanged. Immediately, this statement demands complication. On the one hand, online education is a classical technological disruption of traditional practices of teaching and learning. Yet on the other hand, some of the technological changes represent in pedagogical terms, little or no change at all. In fact, worse than that, we will argue some forms of online learning can serve to ossify anachronistic practices, to a point at times where they almost become back-to-the future parodies of their past selves. On the disruptive side of change, business theorists Joseph Bower and Clayton Christensen speak to technology in general when they analyze "disruptive innovation" (Bower and Christensen 1995). This is a variation on an older theme of technological and social change where Joseph Schumpeter famously called capitalism a system of "creative destruction" (Schumpeter 1950 [1976]: 81). Applying their analysis to education, Christensen and colleagues predict enormous change in which some old education institutions and teaching practices die while others thrive (Christensen, Horn and Johnson 2008). In pedagogical terms, implementing technology need not produce reform. We can video our lectures, but the didactic form of the lecture does not change. We can move from print to e-textbooks, but the genre of the textbook as a medium of content transmission remains the same. We can deliver courses in learning management systems, but the lock-step logic of the traditional syllabus stays the same. We can deploy online tests, but the process of assessment to discriminating the few who succeed from the many who are destined to be mediocre or to fail, remains unchanged. The paradox here is that the transition to new technology-the technological infrastructures provided to teachers and learners by the decision makers in our schools and colleges-may at times force us to replicate didactic patterns of teaching and learning. In this case, technology stifles the possibility of pedagogical innovation, even when innovation is needed and perhaps within reach. Technology does not in itself determine the shape of change. We can put it to different kinds of use; it only has "affordances," or a range of possible applications. Psychologist James Gibson coined this word, capturing the idea that meaning is shaped by the materiality of the media we have at our disposal. His work is at an elemental, creaturely level: "The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill" (Gibson 1979 [2015]: 119).

e-Learning and the Reconfiguration of Higher Education - Disruptive, Innovative and Inevitable

2015

This first part of this paper gives a concise overview of how e-learning ‘works’. The second part suggests the inevitability of more and more teaching and learning taking place in the e-learning context. It touches on some of the communication challenges academics face in moving from the lecture format to the online format and describes some of the challenges that lecturers, tutors and managers face in implementing e-learning successfully.

Online Pedagogical Practices in the Faculty of Education

This report is a response to local, national and international imperatives in tertiary education. Locally, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Bill Lovegrove has opened the debate with his request for ideas for improving flexible learning and e-pedagogy as part of a broader initiative of ongoing development at USQ. These efforts are a response to increasingly competitive higher education markets; expectations of transnational education; and the re-conceptualisation of learning communities on a global scale. Nationally, debate surrounds the recent Nelson (2004) report (Backing Australia's Future), which focuses on universities' obligation to demonstrate a strategic commitment to learning and teaching. The report raises a number of critical issues for regional Australian universities such as USQ in the reimagination of the core business of higher education providers and the degree to which they are able to meet the needs of contemporary Australian society. These issues are also being debated internationally with evidence of significant research activity into the role of higher education in postmodern societies and the related studies of lifelong learning, workplace learning, open and flexible learning, adult and continuing education and the impacts of globalization on education.

Is there a fit between pedagogy and technology in online learning

Partners in Learning, 2003

The study followed a group of online lecturers from different disciplines who were engaged in different levels of online teaching. The researchers' experiences with e-learning have indicated there are a variety of ways by which teaching staff approach e-learning. As new ...

E learning: issues of pedagogy and practice for the information age

It is evident that information and communication technologies (ICT) have transformed our lives and reshaped the nature of everyday activities and contemporary times are often called the 'information age' or the 'knowledge society'. From banking to watching television, from wars to computer games, ordering groceries online and booking holidays, we employ the use of ICT to communicate and facilitate a myriad of pastimes. However, in the educational arena the advent of new technologies seems to have had a minimal impact. Indeed, there are many educators who have attempted to rethink the nature of their work and reconceptualize their curricula and pedagogies in light of the ways in which ICT can enable them to transform their practice. Yet, it is apparent that much of the education sector often seems to be in denial about the relevance of ICT and its implementation in educational contexts is tokenistic and introduced to appease stakeholders who demand access and innovation as their educational right. Clements, Nastasi and Swaminathan (1993) stated a decade ago that we were at a crossroads in terms of our use of computers in education. They noted that we could use them to reinforce existing practice or for catalysing educational innovation. This chapter is about taking the path of innovation. It is about reconceptualizing curricula and pedagogy and about transforming educational practice via the use of ICT in higher education contexts.

E-learning: Effective Strategy, or ‘Just Another Brick in the Wall’?

Africa Education Review, 2018

In the White Paper on Post-School Education and training of 2013, the South African Department of Higher Education and training (DHEt) encourages the use of digital technology where appropriate to enhance access, improve communication and generally optimise student engagement. As a consequence, higher education and open and distance learning (ODl) must contemplate a transformation that requires high quality teaching and learning. Faculty teaching staff must therefore be reskilled not only to teach in this digitised environment, but also to become technocratic learners. In this article, we report on a literature review and an exploratory study that we conducted of sources published from 2003 to 2014 in order to map the requirements for the planning of an online course. We identify the elements needed to ensure student success in this environment, focusing on course design and the self-efficacy of students. We end with an attempt to explain why many online courses do not seem to reflect a scholarly approach.