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Challenges and Solutions for Online Instructors
In the fall of 2000, ITTE convened a summit to discuss online education. The participants included practitioners from the college, professional development and student content arenas. This draft document is a compilation of the consensus of the group, lessons from the field, and includes challenges of online learning and tips for overcoming those challenges.
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Challenge:
How do educators help teachers become comfortable with the tools and the philosophy of online learning?
Tips:
- Lower risks for instructors; don't expect to change everybody
- Share positive comments from other online learners
- Give samples of the type of tools and philosophy of learning online
- Provide professional development
- Allow for trial and error
- Provide practical applications to illustrate the theory
- Educate all involved about the paradigm shift by sharing with them that this learning venue is consistent with existing goals and objectives
- Assist them in taking an online course where this is modeled
- Provide scenarios where online students have benefited from the online medium
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Challenge:
What are some model staff development programs to prepare online facilitators?
Tips:
- Provide mentor / mentee programs (newbees work with those who are experienced and call on them for direction)
- Provide online training that models the type of instruction expected of the teacher
- Ensure that the content addresses teacher's needs and applies to the classroom
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Challenge:
How can educators increase their effectiveness and leverage the collective knowledge of others in online education?
- Research or network with colleague for "best practices"
- Create teacher mentor programs
- Create a library of exemplary models and courses
- To assure success; provide training and" just in time" support for online facilitators
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Challenge:
How do educators ensure the effectiveness of course instructors?
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Challenge:
How do educators get teachers to let go of courses they have developed and feel comfortable sharing?
Tip:
- Create sound policy on copyright and intellectual property issues to protect the teacher and the district? (Whose computer is it? What time of day are they creating the course? To whom are they marketing the course? )
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Challenge:
How do educators validate a student's work and guard against cheating?
Tips:
- Maintain local control and monitoring (physical and electronic)
- Create evaluation tools that require students to create at higher levels (produce products)
- Encourage teachers to know and easily recognize the students style and voice
- Provide at home exams validated by parents within established parameters and give oral exams
- Provide proctored exams
- Attempt to remove incentives to cheat
- Provide alternative assessments that allow students to demonstrate what they have learned
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Challenge:
What information needs to be assessed to determine the structure of an online course?
Tips:
- Pre-assess audience access, equipment, connectivity, schedule preferences, and audience level of interest and goals for the course
- Pre-assess technology capacity provided by school, library, and community center
- Pre-assess students' learning style and preferred mode of communicating
- Pre-assess students' ability and comfort level in working online
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Challenge:
How do educators keep courses fresh to adapt to the changing needs of the learners?
Tips:
- Continuously "tweak" courses based on what isn't working and ask for student feedback
- Use action research approaches within and across courses
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Challenge:
How do educators ensure online course quality?
Tips:
- Provide clear evaluation tools and rubrics
- Provide a useful orientation with clear goals, expectations, and activities to help learners become acclimated to online culture
- Employ skilled facilitators to moderate and focus discussion with interactive course
- Develop different models of online instruction to maximize course effectiveness by incorporating various media, assignments, and assessments
- Provide activities where students can collaborate and learn from each other
- Avoid defining courses according to traditional measures such and length of quarter and semester; focus on mastery of objectives
- Select courseware that is intuitive and navigable
- Provide consistent delivery model so students become familiar with one interface
- Provide simulations or real world scenarios in coursework to stimulate early cognitive dissonance
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Challenge:
How do educators address attrition and engage non-participating students?
Tips:
- Clearly communicate the requirement for assignments to prompt quality
- Create engaging discussions to foster a sense of community
- Provide support so students self select courses that are appropriate to their learning needs and styles
- Use a buddy system to help create accountability and peer support
- Form groups with a primary facilitator in each group; communicate multiple times weekly with each participant
- Conduct pre-assessment to identify learning styles and gear lessons to the "best style" of learner
- Establish online office hours
- Provide clear expectations for participation and enforce the consequences of not participating
- Provide specific feedback and encouragement for students
- For adult learners, provide proper incentives like certification points, graduate credits and salary credits.
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Challenge:
How do educators provide appropriate learning activities online that are varied?
Tips:
- Provide multiple media to deliver instruction (video, voice, URL's readings) and make sure its assessable to your participants
- Provide different options for activities that accomplish the same learning
- Create a flexible learning environment where students can work at their own pace while still maintaining a sense of whole
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Challenge:
How do educators create a sense of community online?
Tips:
- Provide activities that clearly value differences and voices of all
- Share photos when appropriate
- Create student/teacher introductions and web pages
- Use bulletin boards, chats, and e-mail
- Provide opportunities for information interaction so participants can make a personal connection
- Create off-line occasions for the learning community to interact
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Challenge:
How do educators differentiate learning online to meet needs of special students?
Tips:
- Allow different pacing
- Explore adaptive devices to enable online learning
- Plan for ADA compliance
- Create options for different paths for course completion
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Challenge:
How do educators ensure equity of educational opportunity in the online environment (address the digital divide)?
Tips:
- Provide access to hardware and services to all students
- Collaborate with local libraries and community centers to ensure access for all students
Policy and Funding Issues -
Challenge:
How do educators manage accreditation of courses and certification of teachers and related issues?
How do educators define the online working environment to satisfy union type concerns?
How do educators provide effective incentives? (Salary, credentials)
How do educators plan for appropriate compensation?
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Challenge:
How do educators deal with the policies of courses crossing district lines?
Tips:
- There is a need for policies to address student credit granting across traditional boundaries
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Challenge:
How do educators align standards and assessments and ensure accountability?
Tips:
- Content should be developed by teachers who are aligning material to standards and assessing to the goals
- Instructors should provide clear scoring guides/rubrics
- Assessment should be ongoing/continuous until mastery of content is displayed
- Align course content to state and local standards and maintain local school control
- Do frequent "check-ins" with students to see how they're doing and assess effectiveness throughout course
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Challenge:
How do educators fund and sustain online learning?
Tips:
- Create tuition flexibility- pay 1/2 in advance, 1/2 on completion
- Redirect state and federal money and leverage existing resources together
- Demonstrate clear benefits and create a "case" to change funding models
- Suggest cost effective solutions
- Partner with local businesses, community, local colleges and universities
- Seek tuition, grants, partnership, state seamless funding service
- Decide if the funding is per pupil, a grant or other and does the money follow the student?
- Lobby for politicians to put "money where mouth is"
- Do not reinvent the wheel; use existing products and resources to offer courses
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Challenge:
How do educators prevent schools trying to "fit" online courses into traditional classroom periods, terms, etc.?
Tips:
- Investigate new models of scheduling using other locations including a student's home
- Avoid "seat time" definitions of measuring student success
- Avoid using the same assessments traditionally in the classroom if not appropriate
- Provide guidance in instructional systems design including the process for moving classroom based instruction into and online environment
- Provide district incentives for schools to allow students to take online course
- Re-educate community on anytime/anywhere learning
- Schedule time for student to complete courses in existing school day ("zero" hour and 9th hour classes)
Gaining Support and Buy-in -
Challenge:
How do educators and the community overcome the myths and biases associated with online instruction? And gain support and buy-in? (no human element, it's not serious learning or "real", you don't need instructors, etc, cost-effective, can have higher student-teacher ratio, it's cost effective)
Tips:
- Create community / school awareness and by providing presentations, in-services, open houses
- Demonstrate how quality instructors will be needed more than ever
- Provide examples of how "human interaction" translates in an online environment
- Educate the politicians and policy makers
- Lead focus groups to gather valuable feedback and create community ownership
- Present the program as a solution to other community concerns (teacher shortage, disabled student access, self-paced instruction)
- Allow model courses to be open to the public
- Demonstrate course products
- Create courses for community members
- Share success stories
- Illustrate how the model is cost-effective
- Clarify student to teacher ratios need to remain manageable online
- Use the results of needs assessments for holistic educational goals and illustrate how online learning may help the community reach those goals
- Demonstrate "success" test scores, completion rates, cost effectiveness
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Challenge:
How do educators allay fears about classroom teachers being replaced?
Tips:
- Educate policy makers that start-up programs will be an investment at first
- Illustrate how virtual school can be a solution to some of the most pressing problems but is not a super solution
- Use classroom teachers
- Directly communicate to teachers how they are needed in this new learning venue
- Share that technology will not replace teachers - teachers who use technology will replace those who don't
- Assure teachers that they will be trained on how to use online education as an effective teaching tool
- Demonstrate how district will maintain similar or higher standards for employment
Infrastructure Issues -
Challenge:
How do educators redefine "facilities" in relationship to online learning?
Tips:
- Define server capacity needs
- Plan for help desk support
- Plan infrastructure of network issues ( dial in-- or require users to have personal connection to internet)
- Plan for and implement bandwidth needed to support instructional media
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Challenge:
How do educators manage the constant change in technology?
How do educators plan for sustainability and the ongoing budgeting for upgrades?
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Challenge:
How do educators assemble the most effective technology support team for the instructors and students (who need to be on this team?)
Tips:
- ongoing training - constant communication
- interactive between old / new
- focus on content / not technology
- collaborate - attend NSBA conference
- resources to support instructor
- just because technology changes doesn't mean it has to be implemented until educatorsare ready
- hands-on exploration
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