Online learning is becoming increasingly common in our society. This is happening not just in higher education, but also in K-12 schools and other informal educational settings, as an online format is increasingly used for training in industry and orientations, webinars are substituting for or enhancing traditional conference presentations and workshops, and students as well as customers expect to be able to find information and tutorials on the web so they can learn how to do things on their own. It is not surprising, then, that individuals seeking teaching and leadership positions, regardless of context and specialization, are increasingly expected to be able to teach online and understand the implications of online learning and teaching for their students.
Online or digital learning – as it occurs in a digital space rather than face-to-face, with interactions taking place asynchronously (i.e., students can engage with the course materials at different times) or synchronously (i.e., students and instructors meet “online” at a specified time) – has some important differences from learning in traditional courses that meet regularly face-to-face, as well as many commonalities. Our position is that one modality is not necessarily better than the other, but rather that online and face-to-face learning each have different strengths and limitations. Therefore, online learning experiences may be more or less effective than face-to-face learning experiences depending on the type of content and instructional goals, on one hand, and the learning preferences and constraints of individual learners, on the other hand.
In practice, this means that to be a good online instructor, or to include valuable digitally-rich learning experiences in traditional courses, one needs first of all to understand and apply many of the same principles and best practices required to design any good learning experience. Yet, it is also important to be aware of the unique strengths and limitations of online learning, as well as the many powerful tools that can be used in an online space, in order to design the best possible online experiences for one’s students. Figuring out which kind of instructional goals or learning activities are most suited to an online, versus traditional, format is an important skill for all teachers to develop.
In particular, it is important for online teachers to realize the unique potential of specific Web 2.0 tools to encourage and support co-construction of knowledge – as pointed out by scholars in New Media Literacies, among others. Becoming aware of the unique affordances of a few of these powerful tools, and learning how to best capitalize on that potential to support learning in a formal context, is also something our programs aim to offer.
We also realize that, while everyone has had extensive experience of traditional teaching as a student him/herself, not everyone has experienced learning online in a formal educational setting – although more and more people probably engage in some form of online learning in the course of their everyday practice. Therefore, we believe it is especially important for future online instructors as well as instructional leaders to experience as learners themselves the power and limitations of online learning, so they can fully appreciate its potential for their own teaching.
Consistent with this approach, our programs prepare graduates to:
- Gain a nuanced appreciation of the potential and limitations of online learning.
- Develop foundational knowledge in the areas of motivation, learning, teaching, and instructional design, as needed to inform the design of high-quality online learning experiences for diverse learners.
- Gain awareness of and proficiency in using a rich set of online tools, technologies, resources, and best practices for online teaching.
- Achieve proficiency in designing and implementing high-quality online learning and courses.
- Learn how to evaluate online learning experiences and courses to improve future practice.
