Third Peer Work - Integrative Activity
Teachers and
Students’ Online Encounter
A Critical
Review of The Theory and Practice of
Online Teaching and Learning: A guide for Academic Professionals Routledge
Education Free Books. Taylor & Francis Group. New York. Pp 60. by Fernanda
López and Myriam Tielve.
Taylor
& Francis Group have brought together excerpts from top titles books
written by experts concerning teaching online in The Theory and Practice of Online Teaching and Learning: A guide for
Academic Professionals. The main objective of the book is to provide educators with
tips and advice on issues which are at stake in online teaching.
Teaching
Online - A Practical Guide is said to explain the basics of planning a new course online. It highlights the role
of the teacher as a moderator conducting discussions among a group of students
who need to be active participants in the online world and collaborate to each
other. The authors also emphasize the idea of empathy between instructors and
students, should the first ones be familiarized
with computer technical requirements.
Computer support personnel is necessary when
developing online courses as it solves problems about infrastructure, networks
and servers. In this matter, neither do the authors discuss what happens when
such personnel are not available, nor provide examples about effective training
programmes online.
Similarly, Essentials of Online Course Design: A Standards-Based Guide focuses
on the idea of teachers being familiar with the different type of students
involved in online learning. It also discusses the differences found between native speakers of the digital language
of computers, video games and the Internet and digital immigrants, who are older learners and teachers.
Nevertheless, the idea of how a digital immigrant should establish a closer
relationship with native speakers is not fully explained.
In this book the authors also
compare synchronous, asynchronous and blended learning which differ in the
moment when learning occurs. At the same time, authors reflect upon how time
affects teaching online providing an explanation only in comparison to
education in U.S. universities but failing to compare it with other countries
as well.
In E-tivities: The Key to Active Online Learning, the author exposes
who are e-tivities for, what they can be, in which contexts they are valuable,
what their purposes are and what any person needs to produce them. The authors
provide stories from professors who consider these kind of activities as
“engaging learners in authentic tasks and situations” (p.34). One positive
aspect the author signals is the fact that e-tivities save costs as they use
existing resources which are reusable and adaptable.
The authors in Learning Online: What Research Tells Us About Whether, When and How
characterize online learning according to context, design features,
implementation and outcomes. Context and design should take into account the
field of use, the provider type, the pacing of instruction, the synchrony, the
nature of instructors and students´ roles and the type of assessment and
feedback. The implementation is according to the learning location and the
presence of a co-located facilitator who can be a teacher or someone who is in
charge of the technology. The outcomes
are cognitive ones, the students’ engagement, productivity measures and how
students learn to learn.
In Reusing Open Resources: Learning in Open Networks for Work, Life and
Education, Littlejohn and Pegler
(2013) explain the difference between gratis
and libre as regards their levels
of openness.. When learning, an “active agency of the learner” (p.47) is
required and with open resources they can make something new from the creation
of others. Not only do they connect with the resources, but also with other
people who support learners and they may support other peers as well.
Laurillard (2012) in Teaching as a Design Science: Building
Pedagogical Patterns for Learning and Technology considers teaching as a
design science in the sense it makes the world a better place and its concern
is how things ought to be. In this matter, the role of the teachers is critical
as they should scaffold what students think and help them develop new skills
for digital literacies.
Looking at the six excerpts together
teacher and instructors can have a preliminary view of what online teaching and
learning courses involve. Each chapter clearly deals with useful information
related to this new type of classrooms, mostly to whom were brought up in
face-to-face environments and who consider themselves as digital immigrants being far from becoming professional online
instructors.
Particularly important can theory
presented by Taylor & Francis group be, online instructors should not
underestimate the importance of implement all these new concepts in their own
daily practice. It might have been more meaningful if the authors had provided
examples from different contexts, not only be restricted to US universities.
As Laurillard (2012) claims “We cannot
challenge the technology to serve the needs of education until we know what we
want from it. We have to articulate what it means to teach well, what the
principles of designing good teaching are, and how these will enable learners
to learn” (p.60).
Reference
The Theory and Practice of Online Teaching and Learning: A
guide for Academic
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