Your an online instructor. So what?

With few exceptions, everything we do is digitized and computerized. Being online, all the time, is the life-line, the addiction, and the “way it is.”

Learning, for many people, is also online, all the time. We’re the e-learners. E-learning has become a welcomed traveler on the information-interaction-social networking highway.

Institutions have escaped their brick-and-mortar bonds and now offer accredited degree programs in many subjects. Teachers who once delivered their material via lecture in traditional face-to-face settings are now facing new instructional challenges created by the e-learning boom. The expectation that effective learning will occur regardless the setting is not unreasonable; therefore, the expectation necessitates thought, planning, and application.

During one of my data mining sessions, I stumbled across an interesting article that focused specifically on instructor competencies. Since my current focus is instructor technical competencies, the material naturally attracted my attention. Although I couldn’t discern the actual date, I concluded from the references that the piece was likely written in the late 1990s/early 2000s. Even though we could consider the material ‘dated,’ I posit the information remains valid.

The article defines instructor competencies within the online context and proceeds to expand areas deemed important: technical knowledge and skills, time, relationships with students, instructor support, instructional design support, technical support, and institutional support.

Viewed holistically, the article is a template that answers the title’s question, “So what?” If we believe the article’s assertion that “instructors involved in web-based course design and delivery require competencies that have not necessarily been considered important in a face-to-face and print-based distance education context,” we must also believe an e-learning instructor may require a personal as well as institutional paradigm shift.

Central to answering the “so what” question is acknowledgement that e-learning instructors perhaps have to consider more variables—not necessarily difficult ones, just more—than their traditional counterparts. Clearly no “one size fits all” template is applicable or desired, but I am convinced an appropriate template and attitude will provide enough detail and impetus to produce an effective online e-learning experience for both instructor and student.

Here’s the link - http://stats.macewan.ca/learn/staff/lit_comp.cfm. I think the article provides, if nothing else, a starting point for either effective change or reinforcement in perceptions of what it takes to effectively teach online. What do you think?