To be a successful online instructor it is important to comprehend factors such as:
I The Course Structure and Quality, which implies some aspects:
- Structural integrity
- Navigational simplicity
- Intellectual interaction
· Active learner-centered learning
II The Course Delivery Platform. You should become fully familiar with your institution's online course delivery platform - commonly referred to as a Course Management System (CMS) and understand that a typical CMS contains features through which
Students can:
- View a list of courses for which they are registered.
- Gain access to the course materials including:
- Tutorial content
- Assignments
- Assessment measures, such as quizzes and examinations
- Supplementary course materials
- Glossaries
- References
3. Participate in learning activities including group projects.
4. Engage in synchronous as well as asynchronous discussions with other students and the instructor.
5. Monitor their progress by viewing their scores on graded assignments, quizzes, and examinations.
Instructors can:
- Review class rosters as well as student profiles.
- Post announcements.
- Post events in the calendar.
- Participate in synchronous as well as asynchronous discussions with students.
- Track student performance by recording their scores in the grade book.
- Monitor student participation in asynchronous discussions.
III The Support Infrastructure: This factor includes both the Learning support and the Technical support.
The leaning support involves your ability to manage the learning environment and each learner's learning experiences, and to provide informative and constructive feedback in a timely manner. In this way, you have to pay attention to:
- Turnaround times for student inquiries.
- Deadline for submitting final grades.
- Conditions under which you can grant extensions.
- Policies governing plagiarism.
- Number of virtual office hours you are required to maintain
The technical support considers the fact that expertise in computer technology and software applications varies among learners and that there is the possibility for computer systems as well as software applications to malfunction. Whatever the case is, a ready access to Technical Support is, crucial to the success of any e-learning program. Try to:
· Verify that your computer system is equipped with the hardware and software required to access the course
· Ensure that you have instructor privileges when you log in to the course, and
· Secure the contact information of your source of Technical Support
IV The Course Content: Different instructors are likely to take different approaches to teach toward the same goals. They are likely to adopt
different instructional strategies, examples, and assignments as well as assessment measures. Therefore, it is extremely important for you to
comprehend the nature of the course content, and take into account factors that define the boundaries of the content domain of the course:
- Goals of the course and its start and end dates.
- Manner in which the course is structured.
- Location of all course components.
- Naming conventions for different course components.
- Instructional strategies.
- Assignments and their due dates.
- Primary assessment measures.
- Distribution of marks across assessment measures.
- Points awarded for participation.
- Grading scheme.
V The Course Delivery Format: You need to familiarize yourself with the course delivery techniques and strategies, including:
- What is the manner in which the content is delivered?
- What instructional, media, presentation, and display strategies are used?
- Can students gain access to all of the content from Day One?
- Do they have to study the content in a specified order?
- If completion of the content is linear, are students locked into a specific time-frame within which to complete a particular component, for example a module? If not, are you required to provide feedback on content from another module which has a different time-frame?
- Can students gain access to the quizzes and examinations at any time or are these assessment measures released at a specific time? Are they timed?
- Are students allowed repeated attempts at quizzes? If they are allowed repeated attempts, do they receive the same questions with each attempt, or do they receive a parallel version of the quiz?
- Are quiz questions equally weighted or do some questions have higher points assigned to them?
- Are you responsible for unlocking course content? (If yes, create a time-table in which you note the points at which you have to do so.)
- Can students post contributions to all discussion questions throughout the duration of the course, or is there a specified time beyond which they cannot post to a particular discussion forum?
- What are the roles and responsibilities of any guest lecturers?
- Are there any notes the course author has provided to support the delivery of the course? (Remember to seek clarification on any aspect of the course from the course author, if necessary.)
And make sure you know how to:
- View the class roster.
- View student profiles.
- Post announcements.
- Post discussion questions.
- Interpret the trail of responses to discussion questions.
- Participate in Chat sessions.
- Drop participants from Chat sessions. A circumstance under which you should do this is when students ignore your warnings and consistently deviate from the topic.
- Respond to students' input.
- Generate a summary of each discussion forum.
- Delete postings from the discussion forum.
- Review events in the calendar.
- Post events in the calendar.
- Manage group projects.
- Manage the grade book. Enter as well as modify scores.
- Generate student activity reports.
