Online Teacher Training – the resisters

March 20th, 2009

By Jan Kempster

I’ve taught online courses for eleven years in higher education using various learning management systems.  Generally, I’ve found my college students to be willing and curious participants.  During the past two years, I entered the realm of training higher education faculty members to be online instructors.  These faculty-turned- online students are not always so willing or curious.  As I prepare to teach another round of faculty training courses this spring, I find myself reflecting on the reasons why some faculty resist  the online learning/teaching trend.

My sense is that some higher education faculty members simply fear the unknown.  The world of teaching technology is advancing faster than most of us can keep up with it.  Educators who did not start out using learning technologies may feel unskilled and under-prepared to manage the technology. Does the fear of feeling unskilled lead to resistance toward online learning?

When I first began teaching online in 1998, faculty at my then institution believed online courses were of lesser quality than face-to-face courses.  Entire departments refused to convert courses to the online environment. In 1998, little research existed about the outcomes of online learning.  Today, there is evidence to suggest quality online courses offer different, but equally valuable benefits to the student as in-person courses.  Despite the evidence, is there still a belief in the myth or stereotype of online course being of lesser quality?  Or, is it that institutions offering substandard online courses create a reputation for online courses that clouds the overall vision of them? 

The popularity of online courses and degree programs drives adminstrations to expand their offerings.  Sometimes the expansion efforts take advantage of faculty by failing to recognize the level of effort and skill required to teach online.  Administrators who lack experience developing courses and teaching online sometimes make the assumption that teaching online is ‘easier’ than teaching in-person courses.  However, those of us in the profession know this is a false assumption.  Fair compensation for teaching online and the availability of quality training courses have been slow to come about in higher education.  Do these factors promote resistance among higher education faculty? 

Whether we embrace it or resist it, the online learning trend has firm footing in higher education today.  Businesses are also utilizing learning management systems to promote products, services, and information.  My goal this spring is to reach out to my resisters in ways that invite them to examine the many positive outcomes and aspects to online learing in higher education and beyond.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in News | 1 Comment »

Lifelong learning–an opportunity

March 9th, 2009

From Judith McDaniel

In a Blog from January on Lifelong Learning, I asked this question:

So why shouldn’t we all have access to a similar forum for discovery?  What might that look like?  I think it would have a common reading or source of knowledge, the chance to exchange ideas and opinions with others who are exploring the same text or issue, and guidance by a facilitator who has expertise in this area.

And here is one answer–and a plug for a personal enterprise!  A friend and I are offering a chance to raft down the San Juan River in northern Arizona—with conversation, time for reflection, space and encouragement to write. 

Reflection time in Anasazi Ruins

Raft the San Juan River Reflecting in the Anasazi ruins on the San Juan River

Writing Down the River

May 13 – 19, 2009

Going down a river is a perfect atmosphere for allowing the mind and heart space to saunter and wander. Often images and stories appear in the periphery of our thoughts, images that our conscious mind might censor and silence. On this voyage, we will begin to welcome what has been kept out, finding ways to access those images and stories and give them expressive form.

 

We will ask: How can we train ourselves to pay attention, to look closely, to see what is right in front of us in its specificity of detail? And, then, how can we allow ourselves to follow the threads of our own mind, the connections and associations and memories and questions. The poet William Stafford writes that, if followed gently and without judgment, our threads of thought will lead us to the holy land. On this trip, we can practice being mindful and paying attention, to writing as a process of exploring both outer and inner worlds, to writing as a way of journeying to the holy land.

 

It is a risky business, all this exploring. As I wrote in my book Taking Risks, “Every time we choose a risk, we are traveling outside of the limitations – real or perceived – of our lives. When we choose a risk, we are choosing to face down a fear, or at least to walk with it past the boundaries of our previous experience.”


We invite you to walk (and float) into a new experience.

Bernice Mennis lives in the Adirondacks. She has taught for Skidmore’s University Without Walls and, for the last twenty years, for Vermont College’s Adult Degree Program. She gives workshops on writing from nature and from memory, and has just completed a book, Breaking Out of Prison: a guide to consciousness, compassion, and freedom–a book about meditation/awareness and writing as paths of freedom, both within the prisons and within our own lives.

Judith McDaniel lives in Tucson and teaches courses at the University of Arizona and Vermont College. She has led women’s writing workshops in communities around the country. Her books include Sanctuary: A Journey, Metamorphosis (poems), several novels, and her most recent book of poems, Taking Risks.

 Further information: http://www.prescott.edu/cesll/SanJuanRiverTrip.html

Tags:
Posted in News | No Comments »

Page 50 of 54« First...«4849505152»...Last »