Teacher
Performance in
Online
Learning Scenarios
By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.
School of English
Faculty of Social Sciences
Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Post 312
As an active online instructor with a
compressed experienced gained in two years and a half of course delivery in
VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments), I am often asked by faculty members and other
teaching professionals if online courses are good room for teacher training and
professional development. Basing myself on my gained expertise I must go beyond
my professional experience as a current instructor and as a former online
student; I must then refer to Pawan, Wiechart,
Warren, & Park (2016) who have stated that “evidence suggests that online
courses can be effective in improving teacher knowledge, instructional
practices, and student achievement.” In other words, online courses can help
teaching professionals improve and grow professionally.
This is not just my gut feeling about online learning and of
what I am currently doing in virtual learning scenarios as an instructor, but
this is now based on what Pawan, Wiechart, Warren, & Park (2016) have
detected in their research and professional practice in online English language
teacher education. The fact is that my etnographies of courses I have delivered,
when compared to the experts’ way of thinking, do point out towards teacher knowledge, instructional practices, and student achievement as the room for
teacher training and professional development. But how can the training in
these areas improve teacher performance in online learning scenarios? What
needs not be be overlooked by professionals?
A look into Teacher Knowledge
VLEs and
online learning are not equivalent to technology usage as it is commonly
mistaken by some teaching professionals; they are much more aligned with
pedagogy for distant education. As I get to explain colleagues and other
educators, online learning is not about using platforms such as Moodle,
Blackboard, Canvas, Schoology, and so on; it is much more connected to pedagogy
or andragogy, depending on the target group of students one has in mind. The
online instructor needs to be trained on the real understanding and development
of pedagogy (andragogy) since they are much more relevant to student learning
processes. As pointed out by Pawan, Wiechart, Warren, & Park (2016),
“pedagogy rather than technology should drive online instruction,” not the
other way around. Online teaching ought to be focused on pedagogy when student
teachers and regular students are trained online.
Teacher
Knowledge that is developed in VLEs is not measured by how much an instructor
knows about Web 2.0 or the use of CMSs (content management systems); it is
measured by how much s/he understands the pedagogical processes behind deep
learning and the development of skills and competences needed by professionals
in their daily work. Teacher Knowledge is linked to how an instructor is able
to profit from the tools s/he is provided to help students develop themselves
within the course content (and beyond). All this is about how educators make
use of social, teaching, and cogntive presences in a course to replicate what
can be done in a F2F classroom but with the aid of technology driven by
pedagogical comprehension of learning processes.
Instructional Practices in VLEs
As it can be
understood by any neophite instructor teaching an online course for the first
time, instruction in an online environment is not the same as in a F2F setting.
As stated by Laureate Education Inc. (2012), though there are similar features
in both teaching/learning environments, an instructors must be present and
available for his/her learners though there may be preset times to interact
synchronously or asynchronously for both teachers and students. As in a F2F
teaching environment, an instructional practice that needs to be present is the
setting of clear expectations for learners. And because students can interact
with the course content any moment, “it is important to establish how much time
you expect them to be working on coursework each week” (Laureate
Education Inc., 2012) .
This is another area where teachers through online training can profit to help
learners focus on their learning.
Laureate
Education Inc. (2012) also insists on the importance pedagogical features of
online learning. For Laureate it is crucial to “create a learning community”
with the students (social presence), “vary learning experiences” students are
exposed to to foster skills and competencies development (teaching presence),
provide learners with “timely feedback” as part of instructor’s guidance for
them (teaching presence), “invite discussions for inquiries and reflections”
needed for the interaction of students with coursework and content (cognitive
presence), and “use content resources that are easily accessible by all
students” (teaching and cognitive presence). Going beyond these practices for
online teaching, Laureate Education Inc. (2012) also suggests that all
instructors “customize learning to individual needs and interests” to provide
them with educational tasks that can fulfill their learning expectations in
one’s course, and they also insist on the importance of the “use of Real-World
examples in learning activities” and the “use of proper netiquette and
cyber-activity.” To sum up, “… presences are essential for learning by means of
the online medium, and instruction through the medium should strive toward
their attainment” (Pawan, Wiechart,
Warren, & Park, 2016) .
Student Achievement in Online Learning
Oftentimes I have had this discussion
with colleagues and teaching professionals, Are
learners in a VLE over, average, or under achievers? Though my very
personal experience triggers an answer to this question, the fact is that no
overgeneralization can be made for all online instructors. Based on what I have
been able to document in my courses in which I only count with faculty members
of various university across the globe, students become “over achievers” with the
right doses of motivation. Laureate Education (2012)
differentiates two types of motivation when dealing with an instructor-led or
self-paced course; for them any learner “must be self-motivated, however an
instructor and other peers typically help motivate” them (instructor-led
course) and “must have a strong self-motivating personality to be successful”
in a self-paced course. Teachers in online courses can for sure profit from
them if they possess the right motivation and desire to grow professionally
triggering a lot of knowledge in their current and future students.
If a student enters an online course
with the right encouragement (self-motivation), s/he is ready to partake in a
VLE course. Anyone with the right doses of motivation can become an over
achiever (or an average one); anyone who can be positively motivated and who
has been given the right amount of formative feedback can also become an over
achiever (or continue being an average one). Though there is no way of knowing if
a student will become someone who likes to perform beyond the expected and
average, another element to consider is the summative assessment criteria used
in an online course. Based on my instructor’s experience where constructivist
tasks are mostly problem-based learning-oriented linked to real-world learning
scenarios, students get engaged and usually go the extra mile in spite of the
fact that you also find learners who simply do the minimum to get the right
score to comply with a task. My experience with training faculty members from
various universities has also given me certainty that teaching professionals
can be interested learners.
Are online courses good room for
teacher training and professional development? Sure! Teachers can gain lots of teacher
knowledge, comprehend instructional practice trends quite
common in virtual learning scenarios, and
help foster student achievement by means
of the right motivation exponentially, all as part of teacher training and
professional development. Online teaching is not about technology or how it is
used; “online teaching is enhanced by technology but not subsumed by it” (Pawan,
Wiechart, Warren, & Park, 2016) . Teaching
professionals can also be part of this online experience to grow professionally
beyond the mortar-and-brick walls of a classroom. Their teacher knowledge can
be expanded to understand how pedagogy works in VLEs; the discovery of new
instructional practices connected to a community of learning online can be of
great use for current and future courses; and ways to help student achievement
can also be learned to help all kinds of students.
References
Laureate
Education. (2012). Instructor-Led vs. Self-Paced Courses. Retrieved
from Laureate Faculty Development: global.laureate.net/
Laureate Education Inc. (2012). Top 10 Practices for
Teaching Online. Retrieved from Laureate Faculty Development:
global.laureate.net/
Pawan, F., Wiechart, K., Warren, A., & Park, J. (2016). Pedagogy
& Practice for Online English Language Teacher Education. Alexandria VA: Tesol Press.
Sunday, April 30, 2017
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