Guidelines for Effective Distance Education

Guidelines for Effective Distance Education

The instructor functions as a moderator and equal member of the e-learning community.

The instructor does not impart knowledge in a unidirectional way as an expert.
Since effective e-learning is not passive, it is facilitated by interactions and
collaborations between students and instructors.
In online learning a moderator's postings are "interventions," not "contributions."
The "interventions" don't assert authority but prod learning to go deeper.

Inquiry, not the teacher's information or authority, is at the center of interactions.
The moderator is not at the center of e-learning; the learning always is.
Educational facilitators encourage dialogue as inquiry.
Effective distance instructors use inductive, expansive questioning.
Facilitators promote honesty, responsiveness, relevance, respect, and openness.
Effective distance educators do not dominate but empower their students.
Distance instructors gain knowledge of their students by using asynchronous,
threaded discussion forums with an active bulletin board and e-mail dialogue.

The learning community is especially significant in effective distance education.
   1.    Participation in learning is important.
   2. Students verify their active engagement and critical thinking in the learning process
           through posting their thoughts and responses.

Distance education needs to be interactive.
1.    It is collaborative learning.
   2. Even when postings are asynchronous, the sense that participants are collaborating in
           common time can be facilitated if they are working on a common project or are
           participating in a common thread in a discussion or conversation about a topic.
Distance education students share the following characteristics: independent pursuit of continuing education, motivation, high expectations, self-discipline, older age than average students, and a serious attitude toward learning.

Goals of online teaching should include facilitating higher-level, thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

Effective distance teaching strategies include posting biographies, interactivity projects, collaboration, required participation, inductive questioning, flexibility with topics, and minimal technology requirements.

Students and instructors critically need initial training and ongoing technical support in terms of human assistance and appropriate software.

Web sites for distance courses should include syllabi pages with course goals,
objectives, requirements, procedures, policies, schedules, required materials,
and contact information.

Web sites for online instruction should provide pages for announcements, resources, links, message boards, and student pages.

See further discussion of effective online education, http://www.dianehoward.com/effective_online_educationcopyri.htm.

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