Teaching Tradeoffs

Author(s):  
Sorin Walter Gudea

This chapter explores possible tradeoffs teachers identify in relation to online teaching. Instructors, in the process of teaching, have to constantly interact with their students, with their peers, with academic departments, with school administrators, course developers, and many others. The environment in which they function—the form of teaching—poses specific challenges they need to recognize and manage in order to maintain their effectiveness as teachers. The subjects who were interviewed for this book share their perceptions and experiences regarding the potential and actual tradeoffs to online teaching. They try to compensate, for example, for the lack of visual communication cues factual in the online environment, by modifying the design of the presentation slides they use in class and by changing the format of the course to adapt the materials to the different modality. They also note behavioral changes and gains in communication, with some teachers reporting changing to a completely different online persona. The tradeoffs lead to adjustments that may affect the instructors’ communication style, teaching style, and even their entire teaching philosophy. Ultimately, these affect their career choices.

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Norma I. Scagnoli ◽  
Lydia P. Buki ◽  
Scott D. Johnson

The integration of online technologies in educational practice is rendering new opportunities for teaching and learning. It is known that instructors who have taught fully online courses have acquired new skills and have had the opportunity to implement novel pedagogical practices in the online environment. However, it is unclear whether direct exposure to fully online teaching facilitates the integration of technology in traditional classrooms. This qualitative investigation examined the transfer of four experienced faculty members’ pedagogical practices from online to face-to-face teaching. Results of this case study show that (a) the instructors’ online teaching experience influenced their perceptions and understanding of online pedagogical strategies, and (b) the transfer of pedagogical strategies back to the classroom is a complex process influenced by the instructors’ teaching style, satisfaction with working in the online environment, and the similarity of content and context between online and face-to-face courses. These findings have the potential to inform innovations in faculty training and development and to promote further research in this area.


Author(s):  
Sorin Walter Gudea

In the previous chapters, teachers shared their experiences and feelings about online teaching; we have seen some of the perspectives related to online teaching and to teaching in general. Teachers talked about how the online environment affects them and their teaching style; about the tradeoffs they find; the issues associated with technology and teaching online; about the adjustments they feel they have to make; and about the benefits and the losses they notice as a result of their teaching online. Thus this chapter tries to put things in perspective and find out how, if at all, these stories intersect. The chapter also focuses on the central ideas that are related to technology and its use in the online classroom, ideas that have been derived from the interview data.


RELC Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 003368822098527
Author(s):  
Benjamin Luke Moorhouse ◽  
Yanna Li ◽  
Steve Walsh

Interaction is seen by many English language teachers and scholars as an essential part of face-to-face English language classrooms. Teachers require specific competencies to effectively use interaction as a tool for mediating and assisting learning. These can be referred to as classroom interactional competence (CIC). However, the situation created by the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic which began in early 2020, and the recent advancement in technologies have led to teachers conducting synchronous online lessons through video-conferencing software. The online environment is distinctly different from the face-to-face classroom and teachers require new and additional skills to effectively utilise interaction online in real time. This exploratory study used an online mixed-method survey of 75 university level English language teachers who had engaged in synchronous online teaching due to COVID-19, to explore the competencies that teachers need to use interaction as a tool to mediate and assist language learning in synchronous online lessons. Teachers were found to require three competencies, in addition to their CIC – technological competencies, online environment management competencies, and online teacher interactional competencies – which together constitute e-CIC. The findings provide greater insights into the needs of teachers required to teach synchronously online and will be of interest to teachers and teacher educators.


Author(s):  
Patricia Cranton

The purpose of this article is to explore the potential for fostering transformative learning in an online environment. It provides an overview of transformative learning theory, including the variety of perspectives on the theory that have evolved as the theory matured. Strategies and practices for fostering transformative learning are presented, followed by a description of the online environment and how strategies for encouraging transformative learning might be carried into that environment. Students’ voices are brought in to corroborate and to question the importance of these strategies. The article concludes with a discussion of how an educator’s style and strengths can be brought into online teaching, especially with a view to helping learners examine their meaning perspectives.


Author(s):  
Jane Brindley ◽  
Lisa Marie Blaschke ◽  
Christine Walti

Collaborative learning in an online classroom can take the form of discussion among the whole class or within smaller groups. This paper addresses the latter, examining first whether assessment makes a difference to the level of learner participation and then considering other factors involved in creating effective collaborative learning groups. Data collected over a three year period (15 cohorts) from the Foundations course in the Master of Distance Education (MDE) program offered jointly by University of Maryland University College (UMUC) and the University of Oldenburg does not support the authors’ original hypothesis that assessment makes a significant difference to learner participation levels in small group learning projects and leads them to question how much emphasis should be placed on grading work completed in study groups to the exclusion of other strategies. Drawing on observations of two MDE courses, including the Foundations course, their extensive online teaching experience, and a review of the literature, the authors identify factors other than grading that contribute positively to the effectiveness of small collaborative learning groups in the online environment. In particular, the paper focuses on specific instructional strategies that facilitate learner participation in small group projects, which result in an enhanced sense of community, increased skill acquisition, and better learning outcomes.


Author(s):  
Zoriana Dziubata

The paper covers the problem of distance learning of English as a Second Language (ESL) in higher agro-technical educational institutions in Ukraine. Integration of distance ESL learning into the educational process in higher agro-technical educational institutions has been considered from the perspective of its current inevitability due to the COVID-19 quarantine. The most effective ways of implementing online learning of ESL into the curricula have been discussed. Synchronous and asynchronous learning have been considered. Having analyzed the forms of online teaching as well as the requirements for their implementation, teaching the approved course materials online in multiple environment (combined synchronous and asynchronous learning) has been defined to be the most effective one. The authors’ experiences in designing and teaching synchronous and asynchronous distance learning ESL classes for non-linguistic specialties in higher agro-technical educational institutions provide an insight into the characteristics, benefits, and limitations of these two modes of distance learning. Effective synchronous distance learning classes can be modeled according to the teaching style and course materials used in traditional classes through use of the Internet. Asynchronous distance learning classes require quite a different model built around provided course materials and short «lectures» delivered via streaming audio and graphics. However, lecturing cannot provide effective interaction, which is vital in ESL learning. Thus, the approach must be significantly redefined and multiple environment should be created for delivering effective distance learning ESL classes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Patricia Danyluk ◽  
Amy Burns

The shift to online learning that occurred in March of 2020, created an unprecedented period of intense work for faculty and sessional instructors at the post-secondary level. This shift necessitated courses be adapted under short timelines, new technology be integrated into course design and teaching strategies and assessment methods be adapted for an online environment (Van Nuland et al., 2020). This study examines how sessional instructors, referred to in this chapter as contract faculty, and continuing full-time faculty members delivering the same online courses experienced this shift. While the demands of a continuing faculty position call for balancing of teaching, research and service responsibilities, contract instructors have their own unique stressors (Karram Stephenson et al., 2020). Contract faculty lack job security, are paid by the course and often receive their teaching assignments with short notice. By examining their perspectives on delivering the same courses online, we learn that the shift to online teaching resulted in additional work in order to adapt courses to the online environment, with faculty describing the challenges of balancing the additional work with other responsibilities of their position. Concerns of participants focused on a perceived inability to develop relationships with students in an online environment.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 753-767
Author(s):  
Dongdong Wang ◽  
Huaibo Wang ◽  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Hairong Wang ◽  
Xiaoping Shen

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Education of China issued a call for “School is Out, but Class is On”. Various regions responded to and issued relevant policies to use Internet educational resources to carry out teaching activities. In this context, we conducted a network questionnaire survey on district and county education administrators, school administrators, teachers, students, and parents nationwide. It aimed to understand the online teaching situation and the attitudes of different subjects towards online teaching during the “School is Out, but Class is On” period. Based on this, we summarized the problems existing in online teaching during the “School is Out, but Class is On” period and put forward countermeasures to better serve online teaching, to ensure the healthy development of online teaching after the pandemic, and to provide a reference for coordinating national forces to carry out online teaching in response to unforeseen public crises in the future.


Author(s):  
Rajiv Kumar ◽  
Abhishek Goel ◽  
Vidyanand Jha

Using three auto-ethnographies, in this chapter we have explored the experiences of teaching organizational behavior in an online environment. Before presenting the three auto-ethnographies, we have attempted to situate auto-ethnography as a tool in the domain of qualitative research. The analysis of these auto-ethnographies highlights the strengths and limitations of online medium in teaching organizational behavior. Our analysis shows that medium of teaching impacts the teaching style instructors adopt, poses challenges of mastering new technology, forces them to choose some content types over others, has an impact on their satisfaction with delivery and on their overall experience.


Author(s):  
Nikleia Eteokleous ◽  
Rita Panaoura

In this chapter, the two authors co-construct meaning of their individual lived experiences as education faculty engaging in online teaching and learning. It highlights each faculty unique experiences facilitating graduate student learning in an online environment. Co-construction of meaning centers on pedagogical approaches, program design and focus, reflection of faculty-self experiences, employment of digital learning tools, and utilization of best practices of each faculty experience with teaching and learning in an online environment. This narrative is co-constructed following a collaborative autoethnographic approach by two faculty, whereby the central descriptions of each faculty member is situated in one's lived experiences and rich story of facilitating and instructing courses in an online learning environment. The faculty experiences are mainly derived from teaching graduate courses offered by a department of education. The research method in presenting two self-reflective narratives in online teaching and learning extends to doing “collaborative autoethnography.”


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