Posts
By
Dr. Vanae E. Morris
Teaching online is hard! Ok, there, I said it!
Not only is online teaching hard but the modeling of
online teaching is very similar to what we have experienced in face-to-face
classes over the many years of instruction and that is, we do what we have
experienced or observed!
Breaking that paradigm is the hard part! I have
talked about (in this blog) what is considered to be the best practices of
online teaching. However, should these best practices only apply to an online
environment? I think not! As part of my role as a Higher Education
Instructional Consultant, I go into the classrooms of instructors and observe
their teaching. I take copious notes using a rubric that requests information
about the behaviors of the instructor and the students. After the observation
is complete, I take the rubric with my notes, and give suggestions to the
instructors on ways that they could include more active learning strategies,
classroom management techniques, questioning strategies, and many other
suggestions for “best practices!” This conversation allows for the “why” of the
teaching and helps support the “mechanics” of the notes that I took during the
observation.
Over the last two semesters,
there has been a distinct pattern in both mine and my colleague’s observations
that precipitated the formulation of a template with similar feedback and
eventually the creation of resource
pages that we could refer our instructors to for further clarification.
Most of our interactions the last two semesters has been with graduate students
and teaching assistants, who are now modeling what they have observed in both
the face-to-face and online environments over several years of taking classes
from “seasoned” instructors, who are also modeling what they experienced and
observed as students. One of the challenges that we have as
instructional consultants in higher education is shifting that paradigm!
In this blog, I have discussed several best
practices based on research, personal observations and experiences, and
feedback from my colleagues within the instructional consulting community. All
of the best practices can be utilized in a face-to-face classroom as well as in
an online teaching and learning environment, it is just a matter a shifting the
paradigm using different delivery methods, techniques, technology tools, and
strategies. In my role, I encourage instructors to move from what has been
modeled for years, to different strategies that take students from passively
listening to actively engaging in the content!
The last best practice that I want to share is
that of maintaining enthusiasm! Twelve to sixteen week semesters can sometimes
seem like an eternity if we lose our enthusiasm for the content, our
willingness to assist our students toward successful outcomes, and
communicating that enthusiasm to our students. This enthusiasm (or lack of) is
always evident when I visit a classroom, either face-to-face or online, so I
like to give my instructors (and myself) this advice: stay organized,
be an active presence in your classroom, communicate your enthusiasm frequently,
and shift the paradigm to something new!
