Face to face teaching to online teaching: Pedagogical transitions

A case of fully f2f to fully online. Tradition is all f2f, web facilitated is dump n pump, blended/hybrid blends the two.

f2f and online - can't do exactly the same thing. Doesn't work simply to move what we do f2f to online. Range of views on online teaching roles - which are the most suitable???

Stages in teachers' thinking in moving to blended/online
Stage 1 - Barriers - why go online? Too hard to relationship build, issues with academic outcomes.
Stage 2 - academics with some experience and begin to feel more confident, less content provided and looking for more ways to promote online discussion. Less is more.
Stage 3 - less critical and more open minded. Online a space rather than a repository. High expectations of online discussions. Direct instruction to promote higher order thinking.

Embarrassment about what they used to do - evolution of lecturer approach. One online course before views changed - ahead of student adaptation. Experimental and curious about possibilities. Shift from teaching to learning space - thinking about what the students deal with than just the teacher.

Academic involvement with the LMS

Relationships are important: staff/student and all/LMS

Engaged staff: interested in student learing, scholarly in approach to learning and teaching, wiling to be learners, engage with students

More coordinators posted to forums under Moodle compared to Blackboard ;-) [My own experience is that Moodle easier to use, Blackboard has some irritating bugs with forums]

We assume staff are trained in how to use communication tools - but they are not!!

Effort tracker for LMS use, how much effort is put in.

Teacher personality and online courses

Strategies to express teacher personality and presence in an online setting.

In an online setting only setting, students like to know something about the lecturer.

Literature has shown for years value of students expressing personality, more recently likewise the teachers. Issue can be lack of warmth, sense of humour, etc.

Some key ideas

• Emotions in learning
• Formal and informal (learning)
• Cognitive and affective
• Improved retention
• Invitational learning

Risks - online learning can be a straight jacket?

Some questions

• How best to allow people to espress their personality?
• How does this impact the course climate?
• The quality of learning?

Raised a lot of questions - not too many concrete answers though a few responses from audience. Audio welcome.

Use of virtual classrooms

Talk on using Elluminate to create a virtual classroom environment.

Importance of assigning peer-mentors for adoption of such technology to support staff in its use. Not only in training but during the teaching itself in early stages.

Value of setting up session where the lecturer is not present (unmoderated) for distance ed based courses to allow students to interact as they would if doing a f2f (face to face) course.

Value of online discussions as they can be used later in formal sessions for dealing with misconceptions etc. Also efficient dealing with common questions.