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technology for teaching online
As I said in my last post, technology is not the be all and end all of education, nor is it the only thing needed to make education work. Some educators are arguing for the same old ways of doing things, and they continue to cling to traditional methods of education as though they were the only way to go about teaching If you’re wondering what we’re on about, it all has to do with creating a on e size fits all’ model of online education. And this is where the argument for traditional education comes in. For example, some critics argue that teaching online courses should be taught in a manner similar to teaching in a traditional classroom. In essence, they’re saying that the course should be delivered in the exact same manner as it would be in a traditional classroom Well, I say that’s ridiculous. The course in a traditional classroom would have to be prepared and taught differently because the learner would have to be in a physical classroom. This means that the course content would need to be adapted in some way. And by adapting it, I mean that some of the things the teacher would normally do or say would need to be altered, if the course were to be taught online.
The same applies to online courses. And the key here is that the content is designed to be able to be presented to the learner in the exact same manner as it would be in a traditional classroom. But, obviously, the learner would be sitting at home and able to choose when to go to the site to take a lesson. As an instructor, you need to prepare the content so that it’s designed to be the same, yet delivered to the learner differently. In this way, there’s no compromise.
The argument goes that you need to adapt your teaching style to suit the online format. But you don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Some of the things you say in a traditional classroom are not suitable for an online environment. And things you’d normally say in an online environment would be inappropriate for a traditional classroom.
In other words, the course would still be prepared in the same way and would still be taught in the same way as if it were a traditional classroom. But the way in which the course would be delivered to the learner would need to change.
The key to this is to allow the learner to be immersed in the learning experience. One of the things we’ve found in our experience is that when we present the content through an online environment, the learner tends to absorb it better if they’re sitting in front of the computer in a learning environment.
Some instructors take a traditional approach to teaching online courses. This means that they spend their time going through their own content and preparing it for an online environment. But, in
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