Article #4 - Making the Transition: Helping Teachers to Teach Online.

Article 4

Palloff, R.M., & Pratt, K. (2000). Making the Transition: Helping Teachers to Teach Online. EDUCAUSE, Nashville. Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/EDU0006.pdf 

Summary: The article argues that in HE, online distance education this is the response to financial, quality and customer pressures. The authors state a preference for “asynchronous learning environments in which students can read material and post to discussions on their own time schedules. This environment allows students the luxury of time for thought and reflection on material, which “we believe enhances the learning process” (p. 3). Technology training is only part of the problem in HE; how to organise and deliver material is also a challenge. “Electronic pedagogy” needs to take into account factors that might be more straightforward in the face-to-face classroom:

• Familiarity with and access to the technology - more than just training staff in a new platform or piece of software; the technology should be functional, simple to use, and visually appealing.
• Establishing collaboratively decided guidelines for learning and participation - these should give clear goals but also offer flexibility, encouraging students to take responsibility for their own learning.
• Promoting collaborative learning and reflection - this ensures the social construction of knowledge, promotes initiative in learners and “forms the foundation of a learning community” (p. 6). This also requires ‘facilitation’ rather than traditional ‘teaching’.
• Aiming to have every participant participate to their fullest capability - not just a question of quantity, but also a question of what kinds of critical thinking, analysis and atmosphere are required.
• Students commenting on each others’ work is also an important factor in ODE.

By moving to ODE, teachers also learn something knew, and become lifelong learners. 

Evaluation: The opening thesis is that cyberspace teaching requires moving “beyond old models of pedagogy” - while online distance education needs different forms and frameworks of (learning) management, it could be argued that the pedagogical philosophy should be the same - based on a constructivist, learning environment that fosters respect and places collaborative, social construction of knowledge/learning  at the centre of the experience. 

Source: As previously discussed, the authors should be considered reliable, expert sources. This paper was presented at the EDUCAUSE educational conference ("a non profit organisation whose mission is to advance higher education through the use of information technology" (EDUCASE, 2014)). As such it was probably not peer reviewed. The slightly less formal tone (compared to a journal article) does not bely the quality of the content.

Relevance and Comparison to other sources: The article clearly outlines the underlying pedagogical and philosophical factors of ODE, that need to be considered by this setting up any kind of online learning. The references offer very relevant further reading. Articles 2,4 and 5 link online teaching, learning and philosophy to provide a clear outline of the major factors involved in administering/teaching an online learning environment.