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How to prepare a teacher for online courses?

An online course requires specific abilities from the teacher attending the course.

One of the most important aspects of teacher preparation for online courses is awareness of the unique aspects of online education. Teacher will need to know how to expertly navigate throught the online functionalities, how to communicate efficently and effectively with many online students, how to handle technical problems that arise and how to interact with electronic assessments and student records.

A teacher who plans on delivering a course via online should attend a online course (similar to this one). Being able to experience different online learning methods has helped me to decide what will work best for my courses.

Hazel,
Thanks for your thoughts on this Forum. While I agree that a prospective teacher of an online course should experience one before hand, I also believe it's helpful to "team-teach" a course before embarking on one solo. It's also helpful to have online instructors meet weekly to discuss progress and issues that develop during their courses. This presents an opportunity to learn from each other and resolve any potential issues that may develop. I would also recommend going online and looking at "Faculty Focus" (www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching and learning) which presents teaching strategies for online instructors. I think you'll find the articles cover a broad spectrum of topics and very useful.
Dr. Robert Roehrich

One way to prepare a teacher for online courses is to go through an extensive training in the environment used. For example, I was able to go through a four-week training in the environment that our online campus uses, eCollege. It was for people who were going to be helping students and who were getting ready to teach online. It was like a mini-quarter class; we had assignments, tests, discussions and how to reply, and use every tool that the students would be using. People who were going to teach that next quarter had access to other parts that the rest of us did not. Anyway, at the time, I was an assistant to the former Campus Online Coordinator; I have that position now. I also took the test to qualify me as an online instructor, which was an option at the end. Just taking a course would not help the online instructor know how to set up the gradebook, add assignments, do the announcement pages, etc. Those people need that added training to be successful; I've dealt with instructors who have not had enough training, knowing this through students comments, and my knowledge of certain software used.

Pamela,
Great post! What you described is a very solid first step to preparing teachers for online instruction. I agree that additional training is needed for the administrative part of their job. Another element should be how to effectively interact with students and create effective dialogues. Another valuable approach is to pair newer faculty with more experienced ones in a mentor-mentee relationship. How would you evaluate your online faculty during and after they've taught a class, and how frequently?
Dr. Robert Roehrich

The students do an evaluation on the instructors, at the end of each quarter; they are sent a link to the survey. As far as I know, if an instructor has gotten good evaluations, he/she will continue to teach. If any student, during the quarter, has an instructor who is not communicating with him/her, that student can come to me about it. I ask if he/she has followed the rules about time given each instructor to get back to the student. If that instructor is not communicating or answering the student's needs, I then contact my corporate Campus Online Coordinator and she starts the process of finding out why.

Pamela,
I would suggest you add an assessment of the level and number of interactions your faculty are having with your students, if that's not part of the evaluation process. Do you have a training program that shares with your instructors what the expectations are for student engagement and what your expectations are to maintain quality instruction?
Dr. Robert Roehrich

I think that when the online platform is developed, ease of use for both students and instructors should be a top priority. Ultimately, it will be a big indicator on the success of the program. Many times, bugs in the system or confusing interface will make it difficult for teachers and students to interact and for solid learning to take place.

Tzipora,
It appears you misunderstood the Forum question. The question referred to how do you prepare your faculty for online courses, while the LMS is one part of the equation, the focus of the question is on pedagogy. Please provide another response that addresses the Forum question.
Dr. Robert Roehrich

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