What Had Prevented
or Slowed My Engagement in Online Teaching
Factors that got in the way of
my adopting an online teaching practice
By Prof. Jonathan Acuña Solano
Saturday, July 10, 2015
Twitter: @jonacuso
Post 183
In hindsight, my former
professional teaching life faced some impediments to become a bit more
technology-oriented. As I reflect on my school days in the 70s, I still have
some vivid remembrances of some of my teachers. As stated by Bentué-Alonso
(2015, July 10), “when I was a schoolboy in my
country the education was not facing the challenges of today. Even in
that poor relevant learning model, I appreciated the best when a teacher took
his role seriously and tried to teach so good as he could, playing with
all the resources he got in front of him.” But if we 21st Century
instructors want to take our role seriously, we must try to teach as well as we
can with the technological resources we have at our hands.
At the
beginning of my teaching life, access to technology was a serious mishap in
ELT. Not only did I face limitations “in
[my] regular access to reliable or appropriate technology” (UNSW,
n.d.), but also my students faced
restraints in regards to computers. At this moment in history, at least in my
EFL and higher education teaching scenarios in Costa Rica, these are no
problems anymore. Our learners do have more access to technology that can help
them construct their knowledge, skills, and competencies.
Access to the
Internet was a big issue some ten years ago around Costa Rica. I still remember
when I asked my students to download their homework projects from the
university platform, and many of them claimed that they had no means to do so,
needless to mention their complaints that they lacked a PC at home to develop
the assignments. But now we do not fight this disadvantage anymore. Costa
Ricans live in a country where 33.5% of the population have access to the Web
and 67% out of this 33.5% do have access to the Internet via smartphones (Cuen,
2014, March 14). The vast majority of university students have access to the
Internet and use it on a regular basis. This is not an impediment anymore to
move one’s class to the worldwide web.
One of the
obstacles I have personally faced with my language trainees is their inability
to use technology. Just because 21st Century learners have a smartphone and
regularly use social media, this does not mean that they are effective users of
technology to help them learn. As a professor of mine, Dr. Deborah Healey
(University of Oregon), once told us, we teachers are the ones who have to
train pupils how to manage the pieces of technology we want them to use in
their learning process to achieve learning goals. To do this, the instructors
need to have training or self-trained themselves before the actual utilization
of a technology piece in a course.
Isolation is
one of those problems that can be easily fixed by an educator, so it should not
be a real problem in online learning scenarios. Online instructors must have a
control of the three basic presences in VLEs: instructor social presence,
teaching presence, and student cognitive presence. If these three basic online
presences are present, my role as instructor is to provide students with a
channel to synchronously or asynchronously be in touch with me by means of
virtual student attention hours or by means of email messages that will be
answered in less than 24 hrs. The learners need to comprehend that they are not
isolated, and instructors must not give room to isolation, either.
Information overload
is another matter of contention to be aware of. At the beginning students’
usual complaint was, “Where do I get the information to work on my assignment?”
And that was indeed a very good query coming from learners! After analyzing PBL
strategies and seeing how WebQuests were created, we the instructional course
designers of our own courses need to provide them with what is the minimum
required information. From that point on, students can go on their own and
search for more suitable information for their research or project purposes.
Yes, the Internet is inhabited by tons and tons of information, but the first
pieces need to be provided by the instructor. As soon as we understand this
issue with information overload, it should not be a problem anymore.
To conclude,
the “key restrictions, limitations or considerations” (UNSW,
n.d.) proposed in the Learning to Teach Online MOOC at Coursera.Org are quite in force
even today. Depending where our teaching is taking place, the key points are
very valid for educators as well for learners. Many instructors have already started
their journey towards online teaching, and though limitations will arise, go
ahead and face the challenges that need to be overcome to become an online
instructor.
Bentué-Alonso, X. (2015, July 10). Re: Why is online teaching important to you, and what are the benefits? [Online Forum Comment] Retrieved on 2015, July 10 from the Learning to Teach Online MOOC at Coursera.Org at https://class.coursera.org/ltto-002/forum/thread?thread_id=271
Cuen, D. (2014, March 14). ¿Es Costa Rica un paraíso en
internet? Retrieved
on 2015, July 10 from the BBC Mundo webpage at http://www.bbc.com/mundo/blogs/2014/03/140314blogunmundofeliz_cr_web
UNSW.
(n.d.). Why is online teaching important? Learning to Teach Online. Retrieved
on 2015, Thursday 9 from https://d396qusza40orc.cloudfront.net/ltto/pdf/LTTO_M1_Importance.pdf
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