Week 2: Overview, Readings and Resources

Facilitating Learning Online

Although the development of new, research-based theories to guide our teaching and facilitation online seems slow, the field is increasingly complex and diverse (as are the learners!). We can learn a great deal from experienced professionals, and students, who have been in the forefront of the evolving online environments, technologies and approaches to teaching and learning, The readings this week focus on the online environment and proposed theories or ideas of how to teach, facilitate or moderate online learning. If you’re unfamiliar with traditional learning theories, ideas around learning styles or preferences,we’ve provided some references you can follow up in the future.

For this week, the focus is on:

• Teaching Perspectives Online and
• Blended Learning

We want you to think about how you teach and why. What values and assumptions and experiences do you bring to the experience of teaching online? We've provided a link to one instrument that might help you reflect and some readings about quality teaching online.

Reflect on what you know about the way adults learn and then, to consider how diverse individuals might learn in an online environment. Much of the research on adult learning principles is derived from face-to-face education in traditional settings. We ask you to broaden your consideration of learner diversity and the potential affordances of our increasingly networked world with the easy access to powerful technological tools for learning. We’ll introduce the topic of facilitating in a blended learning environment. Increasingly, educators are looking for ways to be more flexible while still providing high quality learning experiences - in face-to-face and online environments.