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Editor’s Note: Anita Pincus has been a trainer of teachers in use of e-learning since 1992. She advocates an orderly transition from traditional to virtual teaching environments so that valuable teaching and learning tools are not summarily discarded. This provides an easier transition for both teacher and student, and facilitates integration of proven pedagogy with new technologies and virtual learning environments.

Courses for e-Teachers
and Course Designers

Anita Pincas

ABSTRACT

The paper will highlight the relevant objectives of training for e-course planners, either staff wishing to initiate e-teaching themselves, or intending to become members of e-learning development teams. Proposed objectives are based on the writer’s twelve years of experience in the field of online teaching, and data is drawn from the ten year old international online Certificate in Online Education and Training which she conceived and still runs for the Institute of Education of the University of London, UK. The principal theme is that such training should include focus on the important time-honoured role of the teacher, as contrasted with a moderator. A second important theme is that e-training courses are best seen as workplace learning and therefore need to be balanced towards immediate practical relevance, rather than theory.

My perception of the needs of people in online teaching are based largely on questionnaire responses elicited from the many hundreds of (mainly) higher education staff that have taken the Certificate in Online Education & Training since 1993. I will outline these first, and then add my own views of what should form part of their training.

It will readily be seen that what my trainees have wanted and expected to learn about has been strongly influenced by the stages of development of the internet itself and the changing pre-occupations it entailed.

Trainees’ expectations

Online education can be dated back to the seminal Network Nation (Hiltz and & Turoff, 1978) at a time when the chief breakthrough was the facility to email a group of people at a time. This was named computer conferencing, and is still a key feature of internet activity, having become a facility of all modern email systems. One might call it Mark 1 in the history.

Not surprisingly, the educational focus in this early phase of internet teaching was on the exciting potentials of group learning and collaboration through asynchronous communication online. Today all trainees on my courses still expect to receive instruction and advice about issues related to it, such as

• optimal group size
• group management
• stimulating and motivating participation,
• types of collaborative learning
• the way in which human factors are mediated in online virtual communities.

They have invariably heard of the new role of moderator in online teaching, and are very concerned to discover whether or not it will give them an extended teaching load or, on the other hand, ease their burdens.

Since most of them, regrettably, have never themselves taken a course online, they normally have no first-hand experience on which to base their own judgments of the importance of the various possibilities in online collaborative learning. The course itself, if online, should draw their attention to and where possible also demonstrate the potentials of different group sizes and types for different purposes, of the difference between co-operative and collaborative learning, to the often deleterious effect on learning of grading participation rather than simply making it a course requirement, and to the very rich human relationships that arise within virtual communities.

As technology developed, Mark 2 heralded the start of multimedia facilities, and there were worldwide funding opportunities to develop multimedia CD materials. These unfortunately were ahead of their time; most computers in the early 1990s still lacked CD drives.

However, Mark 3, the arrival of browsers and the World Wide Web proper [as opposed to the internet, which includes email and computer conferencing such as that offered by FirstClass software] incorporated benefits of the earlier two phases. As a result, trainees today expect to learn about technical matters at least to the extent of being guided as to what technology is available for education and how it might suit different goals of teaching. I find it useful to help them place themselves, their institution, and their students on a matrix showing the gradation from high, through medium to low tech provision.

Naturally, the question of web platforms always arises, and students need to be given an opportunity to try out more than one, as students and as course designers, in order to experience how various aspects of teaching can be managed. They should also be alerted to the new potentials of tracking software, and of linking routine administrative tasks online into their institutional databases in their registry, finance and other departments. I do not view web design itself as part of a teacher training course, though a stand needs to be taken on the goal of the web design for learning, e.g. to create a virtual classroom atmosphere, to facilitate interaction, to facilitate testing, and so on.

There is also great emphasis on the use of WWW resources, notably for independent or autonomous learning, on which, in my view, far too much reliance has been placed. Enormously convenient as useful as the WWW is, notably because of its search facility, it is still not a complete replacement for libraries. And expecting learners to manage their own learning is, to my mind, unrealistic and unproductive. Training courses should in my view urge great caution here. I return to this point below.

The final expectations that my trainees have are concerned with methods of assessment online, or computer based assessment (CBA) and the allied questions of how to maintain security when there is no easy check of who is at the other end of the line. These are probably the two most difficult unsolved problems for online education. Assessment, other than by skilful design of multiple choice questions with fixed answers, is still very difficult indeed. So long as essays of a critical and contemplative nature are part of academic assessment, it is difficult to see how automated systems can replace, rather than merely assist, the human marker. Security issues may soon be solved with the use of "eye prints" or finger print sensitive screens.

Importance of the teacher

This overview of objectives would appear to offer a useful basis for an online teacher training course. But to my mind, there is a very serious omission in what trainees want to learn about. This is the role of the teacher as distinct from the moderator. The teacher has for generations been the pivot of learning, and as such is a key feature of my course.

In bringing the teacher into the picture, I need to overcome the (albeit commendable) way in which the internet has become a catalyst of change in education. I take account of the three possibilities open to online teachers:

• Replication of existing practice
• Improvement
• Innovation

My approach is to recommend the first, because it allows teachers to work within familiar parameters while coming to grips with technological potentials. When they are comfortable in the new environments, they can begin to use it for improvement of their existing practice, or indeed for more radical innovations. But in higher education at least, teachers have not been trained in methods of teaching, and I would urge that they be given some basic guidance before they are encouraged to try more apparently exciting methods online. Indeed, as a catalyst for change, the internet has opened educators’ eyes to methodological issues, and is, in the UK at least, consonant with the present movement towards requiring university lecturers to undergo training.

Thus, if they first attempt to replicate their practice, they will certainly ask themselves where they as classroom teacher would figure online. After all, the traditional model of teacher input, followed by guided exercises, and then by freer activities, is well known and can be very successful if skillfully managed. I would contend that the rush to improvement or innovation through resource based or problem based or learner directed learning has been in danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Pedagogic principles

My course therefore spends some time considering different ways in which knowledge or skills can be presented to learners by the teacher, how well designed, varied exercises can be arranged for practice, and how learners can then be encouraged to produce something of their own based on their new learning. What I have just described is in fact the traditional "teaching event", and can be called the 3Ps for short, ie:

A teacher explaining something is a crucial and unique aspect of a learning event. From the Socratic dialogues of ancient Greece (revisited for higher education in Laurillard, 1993) to modern works about online teaching (Ko & Rossen, 2001 or Collis & Moonen, 2001), the teacher is the acknowledged essential guide. Teaching, I wish to emphasise, is quite different from exhorting learners to read a certain chapter in a book or an online text lecture, and then answer quiz questions about it. It is also quite different from moderating, which is either responding to learners in discussion of something they have already attempted to learn, or responding to them as they are in the process of trying to learn through a project or problem-solving exercise.

In contrast, teaching is about teacher explanation and prior-to-learning guidance. It is fairly standard at the start of a lesson in the traditional college model of lecture followed by workshop. In schools the teaching is normally split into segments, so that the teaching within a lesson is punctuated by practice slots. Sometimes, even in college, the teaching is preceded by practice, for instance experiments in a laboratory, or on a field trip. Thus, the 3Ps can be ordered in different ways, without changing their essential character, but producing different kinds of learning models. For instance, if Practice comes first in the form of challenging exercises, and is followed by Presentation/teacher explanation, we have problem based learning.

Genuine classroom teaching is still not convenient to do on the WWW, since real-time video conferencing is expensive, difficult for all access, and awkward to manage with currently available technology. The cut and thrust of teacher-pupil-teacher is therefore not truly available online yet. I suspect it will be Mark 4 in my development series.

But what is available now is a replication of this process, by the simple means of video -- ideally a video of a live class, so that vicarious learning can take place as the watchers observe similar learners asking questions, making mistakes, and so forth. Second best - when there are no suitable live classes to video, as in the case of my training course -- is to film or record lectures on tape, with or without PowerPoint slides. I have tried to organize the training course along the lines of the 3Ps also. The final P, Production, is left to the assessed part of the course, as is common in higher education.

Structure of a training course

The first module, Pedagogic design for online courses,follows the traditional sequence, where each week begins with a lecture, either video, audio, or text, with and without slides. Note that while I am following a pattern, I am nevertheless exposing my trainees to a variety of experiences as online learners. The second, Choosing and using a VLE and Specialist Options,is quite different, since this starts with Practice in using one or two different virtual learning environments, followed by collaborative discussion and moderating; thus there is no Presentation. During the short specialist options, the various experts brought in to teach these are asked to follow the reading + exercises + discussion pattern, ie Practice. In the third and final part, Contexts of course design for borderless education;there is one text and one video lecture, and two videos of recent conference presentations by well-known UK educators, who deal with the wider issues of borderless education and commercial interests. In each case we have Presentation followed by Practice again.

For any individual teacher, how the 3Ps will be arranged depends very much on what the main focus of learning is, namely:

• Knowledge -- what knowledge does your audience have/still need re e-teaching?
• Skills -- what skills does your audience have/still need re e-teaching?
• Affective factors -- Do you need to persuade them of the value of e-teaching?

There is probably a descending order of need to have good Presentation here. Knowledge is likely to require the most, and skills less, and affective factors are most likely to be achieved by modeling what you want to persuade people of. While no training course can ever be a model for subject teaching most trainees will be concerned with, my course nevertheless attempts to demonstrate the value of the 3Ps approach.

Course design

Finally, it is necessary to emphasize to course designers that the teaching event, ie the 3Ps, does not constitute a course. A course arises when lessons are put together in some kind of sequence, based on a syllabus. A course has to be a syllabus; a course is not just any old bits of lessons. In this respect, there is no difference in principle between face-to-face teaching and online teaching, and there are many different kinds of syllabuses for both. There is the linear which proceeds according to some kind of subject logic, the accretive, where the teacher is building up bricks like a wall, the spiral where you have a central column which might be your Presentation while and spiralling about it are the Practice activities [or indeed, the reverse]. Finally, there is a zigzag syllabus, where the course moves people back and forth, for example between the left line (Presentation) and the right line (Practice activities).

The choice of syllabus is chosen for the training course, will naturally depend on the context in which the course is given. My own course has a global reach, and therefore, in order to balance people’s need to deal with their specific regional concerns against their interest in what else is going on in the world, it takes an overall zigzag approach, moving between regional and international groupings of students. Within this, the first module spirals Practice around a central column of Presentation, the second is an accretion model, where different experiences are laid on top of each other, and the last module is the same type as the first.

It is very unlikely that most e-trainer courses would be as complex as this, since they are more likely to be restricted to a much more homogeneous group of people working in a similar context; the international dimension [which gives my course its particular richness] is absent. Thus, my course is not a model of how a good e-trainer course should be designed. Most training is, in fact, highly context bound and needs to be adapted to the specific cohort. And of course your trainees cannot use your training course as a model for their own subject-based courses, since these would have very different requirements.

Workplace learning

Finally, it needs to be said that an e-trainer course is ideally be designed for workplace learning, since, unlike initial teacher training, a course for potential or active e-teachers is undertaken by them due to the pressing needs of their current or expected work. The implication is that all tasks and coursework needs to be designed in a very flexible way so that people can use them to fulfill their own aims. That is quite a challenging requirement. Work place learning has quite unique features. For instance, your learners do not wish to spend too much time on abstract theories; they need to see the immediate practical value of your course.

Thus, while you may include some background theory, all the activities on the course must be framed in such a way that they can relate to the trainees’ own subjects, levels of teaching, and own future online students. Relevance is everything. On my course I keep the focus on this by requiring a weekly "statement of relevance" which forms a kind of working diary or portfolio on the relevance of the activities of the course and their own learning.

Conclusion

I have sketched how I include in my course the elements that I feel are necessary but which were not part of the participants’ own expectations. I should conclude by saying that, of course, I also take account of what they came to the course to learn about, and try to satisfy them in those areas also. As trainers of educators, we are in fact teaching our peers, and we owe them the respect that their wishes are valid. Indeed, they may -- in the end -- disagree with my focus and decide not to include the teacher as I do. That is their right.

REFERENCES

Laurillard, D. (1993). Rethinking University Teaching: a framework for the effective use of educational technology, Routledge.

 Ko S. & Rossen S. (2001). Teaching Online A Practical Guide  Houghton Mifflin.

Collis B. & Moonen J. (2001). Flexible Learning in a Digital World  Kogan Page.