Effective Online Education

Today only about 16% of full-time students on college campuses are between 18-22 years of age and are traditional residential students. (60 Minutes, 2001) To reach non-traditional students and to meet their educational needs, more and more colleges are turning to distance education. Current instructional technology can potentially provide effective learner-centered, personalized education for non-traditional, non-residential students. As students and faculty move from face-to-face, traditional, onsite learning and teaching, they must learn to make the necessary adjustments. Palloff & Pratt (1999) pose questions for instructors as they move from face-to face instruction to online teaching. They ask such as the following: How do they account for attendance and participation? How do they know if students are having difficulty or are upset? Can they read emotion into students' posts? How can they deal with students who are not participating? How can they recognize and deal with conflict?

Palloff & Pratt (1999) focused on online community in e-learning. They concluded from their research, which they present in their book Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace, that anonymity and perceived safety of distance communication allowed participants in their study to experience intimacy and trust. Being able to take the necessary time to make a thoughtful response, participants were able to contribute substantively in online discussions. Palloff and Pratt (1999) also found that the participation of the instructor as a facilitator and equal member of the e-learning community was a significant factor.

In effective online teaching and learning, the instructor as expert does not impart knowledge a unidirectional way. Effective e-learning is not passive. Online teaching and learning are no longer confined by time and space. Effective online learning is facilitated by interactions and collaborations between students and instructors in a qualitatively different way than in onsite education. The learning community is especially significant in effective distance education. Participation in learning is important. Students verify their active engagement in the learning process by posting their thoughts and responses. The students' contributing through posts their critical thinking and responding is more important than their memorizing and regurgitating facts.

Online learning does not need to function like more traditional correspondence courses, in which students send assignments to an instructor, who grades and them and mails them back. Today with discussion groups and message boards, online learning can be more interactive. The California Distance Learning Project (1997) contends that research indicates that students who are most interested in distance education share the following characteristics: independent pursuit of continuing education, motivation, high expectations, self-discipline, older than average students, and a serious attitude toward learning (Palloff & Pratt, 1999). Especially for such active students, online instructors need to function more as facilitators or moderators than as traditional teachers. Collison et al (2000) also contend that online teaching requires "moderators," rather than "teachers" in the classic sense. They assert that this is necessary if student learning is to be active, "authentic," and more than passive memorization and regurgitation of information using high-tech equipment. They determine that an online teacher, a moderator, needs to act more like "a guide on the side" instead of a "sage on the stage." These characterizations have become cliches in the rhetoric non-teacher-centered, pedagogies. However, in online teaching the practical and theoretical implications of being a "guide on the side" are especially critical. Facilitating instructional techniques and distance in online education may be especially significant for students who are introverted and lacking in confidence. Palloff and Pratt (1999) are convinced that online education can draw out students, who might seem unmotivated in onsite classrooms because they are quiet and easily intimidated in face-to-face situations by more extroverted classmates or instructors.

College professors have a big problem with functioning as facilitators rather than as lecturers. Online learning is more about process and discovery than memorizing and repeating content. Medical people, counselors, therapists, and social workers do better in learning this new mode of facilitative instruction. They are more used to listening and then making sense of what they hear. It is easier in general for them to get their own persona out of the way. Effective online facilitation of learning is generally more informal than teaching in face-to-face, onsite classes However, it takes effort to move from the formal to the informal when instructors are not physically together with their students.

In online learning a moderator's postings are "interventions," not "contributions." The "interventions" don't assert authority as much as they prod learning and discussions to go deeper. As the students and moderator interact, inquiry, not the teacher's information or authority, is at the center. The moderator is not at the center of e-learning; the learning always is. Teachers using their skills as conceptual moderators enrich the learning.
Online learning is collaborative learning. Even when postings are asynchronous, the sense that participants are collaborating in real time can be facilitated if they are working on a common project or are participating in a common thread in a discussion, which creates a kind of conversation about a topic. Instructors, as educational facilitators, must encourage dialogue as inquiry. They must use inductive, expansive questioning to facilitate success in online courses. An effective online learning process is interactive among students, peers, instructors, technologies, and content. In their book Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom, Palloff and Pratt (1999) encourage facilitators to promote honesty, responsiveness, relevance, respect, openness, and empowerment (italic in original) to produce effective e-learning communities. Further, instructors of online courses can gain a greater knowledge of their students than in face-to-face classes alone by using asynchronous threaded discussion forums with an active bulletin board and email dialogue with their students. Since time is a major concern to instructors and students, class size in most online courses should be small, around fifteen.

Goals of online teaching should include facilitating higher-level, thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. In order to evaluate online learning to ascertain whether or not higher-level thinking skills are being used and whether or not transformative learning is taking place, the facilitator might ask himself or herself the following questions of a student's work.

Did the student's online discussions or emails restate information that was gleaned from course readings? Did the sender practically theory? Or did the student create new concepts from the course content, student experiences, and the discussion itself?

Is the student self-reflexive, analytical, and or evaluative in correspondence, dialogues, and interactions?

Management of technology must also be addressed as instructors adjust to cyber-teaching. Students and instructors critically need initial training and ongoing technical support in terms of human assistance and appropriate software. Finally, instructors and students need to accept the fact that they will face technical challenges from time to time.

Here are some guidelines for effective online education.

Online course web sites should include syllabi pages with course goals, objectives, requirements, procedures, policies, schedules, required materials, and contact information.

Online web sites should provide pages for announcements, resources, links, message board, and student pages.

Today there is great debate concerning the effectiveness of distance education, communication, and presenting. Most of this divide is based on opinion and limited experience, evidence, and research. Frequently educators, communicators, and presenters with limited experience in the use of distance technology resist it and argue that it depersonalizes, dehumanizes, and isolates. On the other hand, those educators, communicators, and presenters with more experience in using distance technology believe and argue that it can enhance education, communication, presentation, and socialization in qualitatively unique ways.

Professor Edna Aphek, who lives in Jerusalem, Israel, experienced a dream come true in Kamrat, a virtual, multicultural, learning community. She stated, "It started somewhere out there, in the cyberspace where no prejudice and hostility reign." She witnessed Israeli and Arab youths learning together without hostility in the virtual world called Kamrat. The interactions of these young people fostered meaningful, bonded relationships, which later extended into their real worlds. (Aphek, 2001)

Guidelines for Effective Distance Education

References

Aphek, E. (2001) < Aphekdr@netvision.net.il> (2001, January). Kamrat :The story of a virtual
multicultural learning community in Israel. < tripathi@amadeus.statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
(2001, January).

Collison, G. , Elbaum, B., Haavind, S ., Tinker, R. (2000) Facilitating online learning:
Effective strategies for moderators. Madison: Atwood Publishing.

Palloff, R, Pratt, K. (1999) Building learning communities in Cyberspace. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.

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