Monday, September 14, 2020

Distance Learning Teachers Do It All: Design, Teach, and Facilitate

 I dove deeper into online learning this week, as I continued my own asynchronous online learning and explored what it means to be an online teacher. In addition to adding to my ever-expanding Popplet mind map, I developed an idea of who can be an online teacher and what it takes to be one. Online teachers are responsible for delivering course content, updates, learning activities, assessment, and evaluation to online learners. Being an online teacher extends beyond curriculum delivery. Since teacher and learners are spatially and temporally separate, an online teacher must create opportunities for community and relationship building between the teacher and student and peer-to-peer (if possible). In the Florida Virtual School synchronous lesson from this week's video playlist, the teacher frequently checked student understanding and embedded positive messages into her instruction: 

  • "Give me a smiley face in the chat if you feel OK." 
  • "What did we learn today?" 
  • "I am so happy you were able to participate with me today."
In Borup, Graham, and Drysdale's (2014) definition of teacher engagement, the elements of facilitating discourse, nurturing, and motivating all relate to creating a positive virtual class climate--a place that students want to log on to and interact in. Social-emotional learning, while hard to implement in an online space, is crucial to developing relationships and learning success skills to be a successful online learner.

Online teachers are not just instructors in online courses; although this may be the main role of a teacher in virtual school, there are other roles that support the online teacher and online learners. Harms, Niederhauser, Davis, Roblyer and Gilbert suggested that on-site facilitators and instructional designers are just as crucial to the virtual classroom as the online teacher (as cited in Borup et al., 2014). Online learners, who are taking online courses to supplement their normal course load, may need the motivational and technical assistance that a school-based mentor provides. Online teachers may rely on instructional designers for the technical aspects of a pre-delivered course shell; teachers and designers may work together to create the optimal learning experience for the students enrolled in a course.

As I was reading through this week's articles and watching the videos, I recognized a lot of what I am already doing in my distance learning classroom:

  • Situating and adapting my prior classroom expertise in an online space
  • Organizing the course structure to provide easy access to content, assessment, and communication
  • Providing personalized video and text feedback for individual students
Flipgrid video feedback for one of my students

  • Creating opportunities for community and relationship building
  • Communicating more frequently with students through web-based platforms (email, LMS, recorded video)
  • Designing asynchronous activities that could be done truly asynchronously or during synchronous class time
I was also reminded that I am performing all three roles of online teacher, facilitator, and course designer. Both my students and I are new to the Schoology LMS. Several hours of summer Schoology PD prepared me to fill what was essentially seven blank course shells. I am designing and modifying course content and structure daily, troubleshooting with students as they learn to use a new learning tool, and keeping up the typical instruction and evaluation. Is this what it feels like to be Wonder Woman? 

References

Borup, J., Graham, C. R., & Drysdale, J. S. (2014). The nature of teacher engagement at an online high school. British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(5), 793–806. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12089

Florida Virtual School. (2014, February 26). FLVS teacher of the year, 2014-2015 (Elise Harris) [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/dPopsByb3mM

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2 comments:

  1. DawnSeptember 22, 2020 at 3:30 PM

    YES! Wonder Woman on a Hero's Journey (another one). Reading your post made me think of the QuaverMusic (https://www.quavermusic.com/info/) video that Eric Dawson posted this week (It's on the sites home page too). I know it was meant for kids but teachers need to watch it and believe in themselves.
    Your post also reminded me how much I miss our synchronous meetings (we'll get back to them). The chats were invaluable, as many let me know. These helped maintain those bonds developed in the in-person class.
    There is a line of research related to The Caring Teacher that indicates students are more responsive to a caring teacher, but I do not know of any research that connects this concept with online teaching.
    There is a recent article on the Perspectives of Online Teachers, which I do not think I provided in the resources: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1208818.pdf

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    1. Caitlin CordovaSeptember 27, 2020 at 11:30 PM

      "I'm brave, I'm strong, I'm smart..."--yes, teachers do need reminders of these things. We are not just distance learning providers; we miss our students and the interactions and cannot wait to get back into the classroom.

      Interesting about "The Caring Teacher." I got the impression from the Borup et al. (2014) article that the nurturing and motivating teacher engagement behaviors were examples of that. In practice, I feel the care and connection already to students I've never met in real life. Seeing their faces and hearing about their lives in our Google Meets feeds my hunger for that face-to-face connection until we can be together in person.

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