Several personality traits can make instructors more successful. These include respect warmth and caring, ability to build learning communities, accessibility enthusiasm, lover of learning, accessibility, leadership, collaboration, and professionalism. Traits that help students to be successful include curiosity, motivation and diligence, questioning and sharing. ION believes they must also be good at written communications and pro-active with communication, be motivated and self-desciplined, and have critical thinking and decision-making skills. Instructors may use five different teaching styles: authority/lecture; demonstrator/coach; facilitator/activity; delegator/group; and hybrid/blended style. Although facilitator/activity style is noted to be the most effective for online learning, it seems that a hybrid/blended style would be most effective in being able to communicate with and bring out the best in online learners in many different situations. I will endeavor to develop that blended style even as the facilitator/activity style is the approach I prefer.
