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Friday, September 13, 2013

Reflections about Being an Online Educator

I have been an educator for over two decades and have never faced a challenge as great as the challenge of teaching online. Although, I have never been challenged to ensure learning without the ability to: modify on the spot, redirect students’ questions, and control the environment in which my students learn. I am challenged with teaching online after 20 years of teaching in a classroom. I took this challenge willingly, but I truly had no idea how dramatically it would impact me as an educator. My teaching experience ranges in grade levels taught K-University, content taught and ability levels of students. I have taught, first grade in Guatemala, special education students in middle school and freshman to graduate University students.

 All of these experiences had one thing in common, I had a classroom or classroom like environment where students looked at me, nodded their heads and in general acted like students are supposed to act. Teaching, to me, has always been something shared with students in the confines of a classroom or educational setting. Students came to class, I assumed learning took place and then they went on their merry way. In this framework, teaching was an intimate experience shared between teacher and student, the relationship was central. I knew who my student was and I knew, to some degree, if they learned what I intended to teach in the moment it was taught. I am now faced with a new kind of teaching; this mode of teaching provides a dimension to learning that challenges the core of who I am as an educator. This type of teaching is less about the act of teaching and more about the act of learning. In the past, I was an effective educator because I was good at being responsive in the moment, I could guide a conversation to deeper levels on the spot and I could redo and reteach based on in-the-moment assessments. But I am now facing a kind of teaching that doesn’t make use of the teaching skills I have developed and refined over the years.

In the online environment the relationships built with students are equally if not more important, but require an entirely different approach. When a student isn’t in the room to see your expressions and enthusiasm a different approach to connecting with students is imperative. This understanding forced me out of my comfort zone and I began creating and sending video message and exploring online communities. I also realized my email communication needed to be thoughtful, clear and consistent. Surprisingly, online teaching has made me more aware each student because I hear each students voice and read each students’ words every week. As an online teacher I have learned the tremendous importance of preparation. In the online environment there is no redo button or space for spontaneous corrections to directions. It takes at least one full week to recover from a miscommunication, so clarity is a must. This has pushed me to think through my expectations and assignments, write clear directions and develop effective rubrics for grading. It has caused me to think about the learning first and the doing second. In other words, I don’t think about what I need to tell the students, I think about what the student needs to learn. I then structure the materials available on a given topic. I look for open access materials, I create materials and I develop environments for students to explore and research topics. After structuring the learning opportunities I must know if they learned the material or not, gone is the assumption that they came to class, I spoke, therefore they learned. I must have evidence that this learning took place. This evidence must not all be in writing, because well, quite frankly expressing learning through writing is really only one piece to this puzzle. I must find a way to hear my students’ ideas and see their understanding. Due to technology I am able to easily check my students learning through assignments that include, voice, video, text and other creative outlets along with the more traditional academic assessments. Much of the demonstration of learning I require is done in public or open class avenues. I do this so students can learn from one another and share in the experience of learning. Becoming an online teacher has been hard, it has challenged me as an educator to think more deeply about learning from my students’ perspective and it has challenged me to redefine what it means to teach. Online teaching has forever changed the way I interact with my students, for the better.

1 comment:

  1. Really interesting reflections Jill - I look forward to reading more.

    ReplyDelete