For Traditional Faculty, Easy Transition to Online Teaching Shouldn’t be Assumed, says Expert

Posted on September 3, 2009 by Barbara Macaulay

UMassOnline Barbara Macaulay Cameron Nichol is the Manager of eLearning & Educational Design in the Department of Accounting and Finance at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. In a recent viewpoint, which was triggered by the remarks of a college professor in the United States who found online teaching very challenging, Mr. Nichol provides some good perspectives. His point of view, in fact, may help a lot of faculty members and online education advocates and developers better understand how to assist teachers in mastering the technology before venturing forth to teach online.

One line in particular in his presentation captures much about the danger of assuming it is easy, natural, intuitive or appropriate to assume that even a seasoned traditional college professor can automatically adapt to online teaching:

Expecting a university lecturer, whose experience of teaching and learning is based on a traditional face to face lecture/tutorial model, to step in and teach online is like expecting your plumber to wire your house.

His views, which you can read in their entirety here, include his perspective that online learning is harder to do, does take more time, and does require some traditional faculty to contemplate potential changes in their traditional role. While I think teaching online can actually help someone with their teaching overall, the perception that online teaching is harder and more time-consuming is also borne out by the newly released report from APLU. This report provides strong survey data with faculty and reveals that faculty want and need more instructional design support to make the process of online teaching more facile.

Comments

2 Responses to “For Traditional Faculty, Easy Transition to Online Teaching Shouldn’t be Assumed, says Expert”

Apostolos K. on September 3rd, 2009 1:52 pm

I think that teaching online is not necessarily harder - it’s just different. The time it takes to prepare for an online class, versus a face to face class, is probably the same if you add up all the time you spend on the class during the semester. The difference (that I’ve observed) is that teaching online requires a lot of preparation ahead of time, while teaching face to face allow one to do things just-in-time or in smaller chucks and thus does not feel like it’s taking longer.

I would say that instructional designers are a definite help to faculty (both in online and face to face teaching environments), but I am biased since I am an instructional designer
Barbara Macaulay on September 4th, 2009 7:42 am

Hi–

Thanks for your comment. I would agree with your observation. What I find with an online courses is that because I have much of the course preparation (at least 90%) out of the way by the beginning of the semester, I can usually spend more time on the interactive things–the teaching part!!

Thanks for sharing–and your bias is a good one. Instructional designers are worth everything to faculty members!