The Role of An Online Teacher

I am so used to teaching face to face, and I don’t have much experience teaching online. But, I recently just got asked to teach some online courses for the university I currently teach ground courses at, and wrapped up training this week. What are the differences between teaching higher learning face to face vs. online in an asynchronous environment? 

Teaching face to face, you see your students every day, you have routines, classroom management, you deliver lessons to the students in front of them and students are in charge of their learning. I like to say, this is where a more direct instruction takes place. With online teaching some aspects are the same, but the roles are more reversed. 

Both teachers and students need to know the expectations that they need to do in order for learning to be successful. Teachers know they need to online, monitoring discussions at least every 48 hours. Students should be answering and discussing amongst the teacher and their peers whatever it is that they are learning.

The teacher’s role is to be an online facilitator. They monitor discussions, answer and further their students thinking, and assess their thinking by creating CATS (Classroom assessment techniques) to assure their students understand the content. They create ground rules, the syllabus, model what kind of participation is good participation and what the expectations are in an online environment. At the same time, the online teacher grades accordingly as well as acts as technical support in case information isn’t uploading or students may be struggling with. Sounds like a lot, right? We actually do the same tasks teaching face to face, the only exception is this is through a computer.

A student, on the other hand needs to participate through discussion forums or via live web. This means using critical thinking and though explanations when answering discussion questions. The beauty of online discussions is that those who are considered shy in a face to face classroom, can really “voice” their opinions or thoughts via online. Also discussions allow you to really dig deep and further the discussion in whatever you are talking about, rather in a classroom, because of time limitations both students and teachers have to wrap it up. Students also have to be self-driven to learn via distance learning. This means self-directed learners in what they need to accomplish because they are learning on their own time.

I’ve learned a lot this week, whether you are teaching a distance course or via synchronously live to students, both teacher and students have to self-motivated, able to juggle many roles at once, and be knowledgeable when it comes to some technical things.