The Challenges of Effective Online Instruction and Student Learning

Renee Wallace
College of Education
Florida A&M University
Tallahassee, Florida
Renee.Wallace@famu.edu

Abstract: Advances in telecommunications and computer-based instruction and student

learning systems have expanded the opportunities in online instruction and student

learning, yet the potential of online learning resides not in the specific technologies that

are applied, but in the nature of instructional methodologies and learning activities that

occur when a technology is utilized. There is a trend towards redefining professional

educator and student leaner roles in a more constructivist manner. This paper focuses on

the nature of online teaching and student learning. The purposes of this paper are [1] to

examine the professional educator‘s roles in technology integration, [2] to examine the

professional educator‘s role to facilitate student learning with technology and [3] to

identify effective online instructional practices. While some research suggests a specific

set of required skills, unique to online instruction, there is strong indication that effective

instructional practices in traditional contexts are also applicable to online environments.

The result is a paradigm shift of the professional educator‘s role from presenter to

facilitator/coach; a compilation of instructional competencies for effective online

environments; some extrapolated from effective teaching practices in traditional setting,

and others, distinctly emerging from online instruction and student learning

environments.

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Introduction

It is evident that the pace of educational innovation has outpaced educational research,

and there is no educational sector in which this in truer than online learning. According

to the National Center for Education Statistic (NCES), as of Fall 2001, 99% of public

schools in the United States have access to the Internet. Although this statistic shows a

tremendous increase in Internet access compared to 35% in 1994, many issues regarding

computer use remain unresolved, including [a] students limited cognitive capacity to

process the large amount of resources on the Internet (Hannafin, Hill, Oliver, Glazer &

Sharma, 2003), [b] a dilemma between providing exploratory, authentic class activities

with computer tools and achieving desirable scores from standardized tests, and [c] a lack

of connection between professional educators‘ epistemological beliefs and practical

teaching practice with technology. Advances in telecommunications and computer-based

teaching and learning systems have expanded the range of teaching and learning

opportunities online, but there is general agreement that the potentials of online learning

reside not so much in the specific technologies that are applied, but in the nature of

teaching and learning activities that occur when a technology is used. There is a trend

towards redefining professional educator and learner roles in a more constructivist

manner. This paper focuses on the nature of online teaching and student learning. The

purposes of this paper are [1] to examine the professional educator‘s roles in technology

integration, [2] to examine the professional educator‘s role to facilitate student learning

with technology and [3] to identify effective online instructional practices.

2
Teaching and Learning in Distance Education

Traditionally, distance education has been more successful at delivering content and less

successful at providing interactivity and implementing the creative use of technology.

Even the Internet, with all its advertised potential for interactivity and connectedness, has

often been used simply to deliver print-based materials (e.g., downloadable PDFs) or

other similar forms of non-interactive courseware. Streamed video on the Internet is

commonly used to deliver course lectures taped in classrooms.

There are individuals who argue that the era of media‘s primary role as delivery

systems is nearing its end as more sophisticated interactive technologies find their way

into everyday distance education practice (Dede, 1966; Ullmer, 1994; Kozma, 1994).

Presumably, such technologies go beyond online (OL) class discussions and two-way

communication, allowing student learners to engage in truly constructivist learning.

Constructivism is an emerging paradigm that has been suggested as a basis for re-

conceptualizing distance education (Tam, 2000). Constructivism asserts that learning

involves active construction of meaning by the student learner, who draws upon a myriad

of internal and external factors affecting learning. Constructivist approaches also posit

that complex skills normally emerge in challenging learning environments where active

engagement can occur; context may have a significant bearing on skill master, execution

and transfer (Blaxton, 1989; Tulving, 1983). The importance of context has led several

theorists (e.g., Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989) to describe cognition as situated in the

learner‘s culture, setting, history and environment. They argue that multiple contexts,

active engagement and realistic activities enhance learning and transfer. Finally, work on

socially shared cognition and distributed learning (Resnick, Levine & Teasley, 1996:

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Salomon, l993) emphasize the importance of the social context for learning, within and

between individuals in computer-mediated virtual environments, and gives rise to

emerging conceptualizations of groups as information processors. Thus is the vision of

online teaching and learning emanating from the explosive growth in telecommunications

and computer-based learning opportunities.

Innovative Roles of Professional Educators in Student Learning

Education reformers have advocated proactive, authentic learning experiences for

students to foster problem solving in everyday situations. The National Research Council

(1996) has proposed scientific inquiry, in which students generate problems and

hypotheses, find evidence, draw a conclusion from their findings, communicate with

peers, professional educators, and scientists, and justify their conclusions as critical for

doing science. As the professional educator‘s role changes from the transmitter of

knowledge to the action oriented facilitator, the roles of technology and computers in

student learning changes from one of student learning from technology to student

learning with technology. Hence, the idea of computers as tools coincides with

Salomon, Perkins, and Globerson‘s (1991) description of learning with technology (cited

in Jonassen and Reeves, 1996):

First, we distinguish between two kinds of cognitive effects: Effects

With technology obtained during intellectual partnership with it, and

the effects of it in terms of the transferable cognition residue that

this partnership leaves behind in the form of better mastery of

skill and strategies. (p.2)

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 Building upon the notion of computers as tools, Hannafin, Land and Oliver (1999)

proposed a framework, Open-ended learning environments (OELE), to identify the

characteristics and components that computer tools need to facilitate higher order

thinking. They need to be grounded in empirically proven practices, regardless of the

epistemological approach they take (e.g., constructivist, instructivist, etc.). Specifically,

they should address four basic principles: enabling contexts, resources, tools and

scaffolds. Enabling contexts frame learning in situational boundaries within which

problems are posed or surface, be they well defined or open-ended. Resources means

learners have access to different libraries of knowledge rather than receiving it all from

one source. These may take a variety of forms, including such sources as the Internet,

professional educators, parents, peers, books, etc. Tools are the means provided to allow

learner inquiry into the problems at hand. They should allow learners to confirm,

challenge, explore and test the contextual theories and ideas presented. Scaffolds are

support structures that ―shift the locus of responsibility for task completion to the learner:

(Sharma, 2001). Removing the scaffolds should not hinder or diminish learner

knowledge in any way, rather knowledge remains intact because the learning is placed

only on the learner and rests in no way on the scaffold. OELEs proposes that all four

elements be present and properly in order to foster high order thinking skills.

Based on the OELE framework, characteristics to effectively increase student learning

computer activities should:

A. Be situated in students‘ real lives and problems

B. Provide balanced scaffolds

C. Enhance students‘ reflective thinking

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 D. Promote communications from learners‘ multiple perspectives

E. Foster an interdisciplinary approach to subject matter

F. Include process-oriented assessments

Effective Online Teaching

If there is to be a change in the orientation to student learning at a distance it must be

supported by a change in the orientation to teaching at a distance. Do the same skills that

define excellence in classroom teaching apply in online courses? Research by Chickering

and Gamson (1987) offers an interesting framework with which to address this question.

Based on 50 years of educational research, they produced a list of seven principles of

good teaching practices in face-to-face courses. Graham, Cagiltay, Craner, Lim and Duff

(2000) used these same seven principles to assess whether these skills transfer to online

teaching environments. Their general findings, supported by the research of Schoenfeld-

Tacher and Persichitte (2000) and Spector (2001), indicate that online teachers typically

require different sets of technical and pedagogical competencies to engage in superior

teaching practices in online courses. Ultimately, such research may lead to improved

preparation for online professional educators, targeting specific areas of practice and

helping novice online professional educators become aware that they ―need more

planning time, more instructional support and additional training for all of the potential

delivery formats for distance teaching: (Cyrs & Conway, 1997, p. 18).

Of greater importance in this paper are the effects of online teaching on online

student learning. How are student participation represented by posted messages, and the

criteria that both quantifies and qualifies good participation established? What criteria

6
constitute good participation and what is the relationship between these criteria and

motivation, understanding, and learning? Sadly, one major factor affecting online

teaching is that professional educators still do not understand how to construct an online

environment so that it is the quality and level of comprehension that is represented and

factored into course grades, not volume of messages. Professional educators who teach

online continue to be overwhelmed by the volume of messages they must attend to,

which naturally leads to students being overwhelmed as well, simply due to the fact that

online communication continues to be structured and evaluated in terms of number of

messages, rather than evolving into a collective, collaborative knowledge building

endeavor.

The reality is that the majority of faculty has little or no experience with online

learning, what it entails, and how it is successfully undertaken (Gold, 2001). Gold

contends that to become an effective online professional educator, one must engage in

online learning. The experience of participating in an online community from a learner‘s

perspective develops new thinking about pedagogy. Without this type of experience,

teachers simply apply traditional practices (Gold, 2001) to new teaching and learning

contexts when, to be effective online professional educators, they should be developing

new methodologies of teaching that re-distribute power, roles, and responsibility within

the learning community. The change from thinking about knowledge being fixed to a

particular place and time to being accessible anytime, anywhere invokes a tremendously

powerful paradigm of teaching and student learning. Yet, without proper pedagogical

training and online experience, professional educators regrettably continue to draw upon

their knowledge of what works best in a traditional teaching environment, and implement

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those strategies in their online courses. The result is often professional educators and

students engaging in a barrage of messages, where, neither, the technology, the teaching

nor the student learning, is being optimized for beneficial use.

Effective Teaching Practices

Research in distance teaching suggests a specific set of required skills, unique to online

teaching; there is strong indication that effective teaching practices in conventional

contexts are applicable to online learning environments. The result is a compilation of

competencies for effective online teaching, some drawing from effective teaching

practices in traditional settings, and others, distinctly belonging to online teaching and

student learning environments.

Converting Traditional Instructional Strategies into Online Practices

Building on the work of, Chickering & Gamson (1987) and Graham, Cagiltay, Craner,

Lim and Duff (2000), there are effective instructional strategies typically implemented in

traditional teaching environments that can be useful in online student learning

environments. Yet, often the discussion about traditional face-to-face instructional

strategies versus online strategies becomes murky, often reduced to the question of

whether or not traditional instructional practices have a place in online communities of

student learners. Basically, the issue is one of educating oneself in the pedagogy of

online instruction and the skills of effective online learning in order to convert effective

traditional instructional strategies into purposeful online practices to increase student

learning. Table I below, presents a summary of the findings of research by Graham et.

8
al. (2000), which essentially confirms that there are steadfastly effective instructional

strategies in traditional learning environments that apply equally well in online

instruction.

Principles of Effective Teaching Lessons Learned for Online Teaching

1. Encourage student-faculty contact Professional educators should provide clear

guidelines for interaction with students.
Explain how often you will be online and how
quickly you will be able to reply to emails.
Notify students when you will be temporarily
―away‖ from the course.
2. Encourage collaboration among students Well-designed assignments and activities
facilitate meaningful collaboration among
students.
3. Encourage active learning Students should present course projects.
Provide a forum in which students can present
their own work and hold it accountable to
critique and constructive criticism.
4. Provide prompt feedback Professional educators need to provide two
types of feedback: Information feedback
(regarding student learning) and
acknowledgement feedback (regarding student
participation).
5. Emphasize time on task Online courses need deadlines. Activities
require timelines that accommodate learners‘
schedules, course accessibility and offline
work.
6. Communicate high expectations Challenging tasks, sample cases, and praise for
quality work communicate high expectations.
7. Respect diverse talents and ways of learning Allowing students to choose project topics
incorporates diverse views into online courses.

Table 1: Seven principle of effective teaching in online course

What the field of educational technology has postulated for over 30 years is that

in order to encapsulate the potential of technology for increasing student learning,

professional educators must have direct knowledge of, and experience with, the

technology being used. To further expand this rationale is that in order for professional

educators to influence technology to create innovative and engaging opportunities of

9
learning for their students in an online environment, professional educators themselves

must have the technology experience. Knowledge of and experience with the technology

used to facilitate and engage student learning informs and converts pedagogy such that

some would argue that the ―old‖ pedagogical approaches have no, or extremely limited

bearing on online learning contexts. Voiding the ‗either or‘ debate, recent research

(Graham, Cagiltay, Craner, Lim and Duff, 2000), indicates that traditional instructional

strategies, with specific modifications to accommodate innovative instructional media, do

serve an important role in online teaching. Graham et. al., (2000) strongly assert that

there are some skills required of effective online professional educators, that must be

newly learned, because there is no comparable face-to-face pedagogy from which to

draw. This is corroborated by the research of Gold (2001), Schoenfeld-Tacher and

Persichitte (2000) and Spector (2001), wherein the roles and capabilities of effective

online professional educators are clearly associated with the acquisition of very specific

skills and knowledge.

Developing New Instructional Methodologies for Online Teaching

Professional educators must shift their instructional perspectives to be effective in an

online environment. They do not have to abandon their teaching philosophies but rather,

find innovative ways to demonstrate and utilize them in an online environment. Teaching

online is very different from traditional classroom practice. Rather than being a presenter

in a traditional classroom, an online professional educator is more like a facilitator or

coach to his/her students. In a traditional classroom, the professional educator

disseminates information so that students are enthused about the content. To the extent

10
that the student is engaged in active learning, there is less need for the professional

educator to provide extrinsic motivation to enable students to move through the course.

However, there is much more to an effective online course than the assembly of course

modules or the amalgamation of course activities. The most effective online courses are

those that have vital communities of learning, built and sustained through applications of

sound pedagogy and instructional methodology, and significantly characterized by high

levels of interaction, feedback, moderating, and facilitating/coaching.

Moderating and Facilitating/Coaching

Moderating is maintaining a constant flow of content-focused interaction between

students. Strategies include encouraging students to participate in discussions and

individual and group learning activities; keeping discussions focused on specific content;

drawing out multiple perspectives; and summarizing and synthesizing the salient points

of discussions. Moderating also entails ensuring that certain students do not dominate

discussions. Facilitation/coaching involves disseminating information and direction to

assist students with completion of assignments, suggesting ideas or strategies for them to

pursue in their course work, and getting students to reflect on their responses and their

work product. It involves scaffolding the building of both individual and collective

knowledge, and elevating student cognition and reflection, so that each student‘s learning

is maximized.

Moderation and facilitation/coaching take place in various locations of the course

area, in various amounts, according to the type of learning activity and level of student

preparedness, ability and social need. At the beginning of the course, for example, the

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professional educator may discuss with students their specific expectations and goals for

the course, given their background, experiential base, learning style and previous online

experience. In the context of conference areas or group forums, the professional

educator‘s primary concern is to get all students to participate and learn from one

another. Similarly, in the context of group projects or collaborative activities, the

professional educator is focused on getting student to work together and learn together so

that all students benefit from the group interaction.

Many researchers (Dehler & DeSimone, 2000; Gold, 2001) suggest that the

ability to facilitate and moderate online courses is a skill that can only be fully developed

online. The implication is that in order for a professional educator to develop the

knowledge and skills required to effectively facilitate/coach and moderate an online

community he/she must position him/herself to fully engage in the experience. There are

no similar strategies in classroom instruction that approximate the task of being

responsible for sustaining and intelligent conversation and learning in a dynamic and

changing environment.

Implementing Effective Instructional Design

Instructional design is a systematic process, involving the analysis of a particular

educational scenario and the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of

instructional strategies to address that specific educational situation (Reiser, 2001). In its

simplest form, instructional design is the deliberate organization of teaching and learning

activities so that content is effectively delivered and eventually mastered. Designing for

online learning environments is particularly challenging, because one must fully

12
understand the potential and limitations of the technology involved, and how each of

these affects student learning.

Stubbs and Burnham (1990) define an online course as a learning environment

where students and teachers employ very specific methods and techniques enabled by

technology to communicate information and convey knowledge. An engaging and

effective online course involves the utilization of its three entities; professional educator,

student and content, by means of the strategic implementation of three instructional

methodologies: the organization of students for learning; the design of activities that help

students learn; and, the selection of technology and tools to facilitate the delivery of the

first two strategies (Piccciano, 2001).

In effective learning systems, interactivity between professional educator, student

and content is high. In online learning, each of the possible interactions among the three

aforementioned entities is extremely important. With respect to instructional design,

each must be considered to create a successful online course: Professional educator—

student interaction; student—student interaction; and, professional educator and student

interaction with content (Picciano, 2001). An online professional educator must be able

to customize the content, monitor student progress, and provide guidelines for further

study. Mastering the skills of designing online courses takes time and multiple

opportunities to implement instructional methodologies.

Management versus Instruction

The challenge that most professional educators face when teaching an online course is

that much of their time is spent managing and administering the course leaving little time

13
and energy for actual instruction. When too much of a professional educator‘s time is

spent on the technicalities of teaching an online course, valuable expertise is

underutilized. Therefore, it is crucial to design and organize the online course, activities

and assignments, so that managing the course is not time consuming.

Pedagogical and Technical Tasks

Technical tasks include: ensuring and maintaining confidentiality of communication;

keeping the course conference areas uncluttered and easy to navigate; removing any

inappropriate communication; uploading materials and modifying course site when

required. Pedagogical tasks include: motivating and moving students, collectively and

individually, through the course content; stimulating high quality intelligent online

discussions with specific and focused questions; assessing learning and evaluating the

course.

Acquiring Innovative Instructional Functions

Of the many innovation roles and responsibilities one assumes when teaching an online

course, the majority of a professional educator‘s online instruction relates to one of the

following four functions of communication. These include: organizational – to set the

schedule and organize students, activities and interactivity for the online course; social –

to create and maintain a user friendly, constructive and active learning environment;

intellectual – to focus discussion on the content and critical points, engage students in

higher order thinking and support individualized and collaborative learning; and,

assessment – to assess learning of course content and attainment of instructional

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objectives. While communication serving these affective and strategic purposes is not

completely foreign to an online professional educator, the challenges of carrying out the

communication online can be overwhelming without adequate preparation and

organization. The ability to respond to students quickly and appropriately takes time to

master, and is entirely dependent upon one‘s ability to design and manage an online

course, wherein the work of facilitating/coaching, moderating, and the performing of

technical and pedagogical tasks is manageable.

Conclusion

An online course and the teaching thereof transform learning, curriculum and pedagogy

(Dehler, 2003). A number of adjustments have to be made to both instructional

modalities and to the curriculum in order to implement useful, relevant and effective

online courses. Changes to the curriculum typically revolve around several key points,

which include: deciding upon and structuring learning activities; selecting the readings

and other course work upon which the learning activities would be based; allocating

enough time for the learning activities to be learned; ensuring that changes created by any

actions taken with respect to all of the above, are relevant to the remainder of the course

content. Modifications to instructional approaches imply both the conversion of effective

traditional instructional strategies into purposeful online practices and the acquisition of

new knowledge and competencies in a number of technological and pedagogical areas.

Effective online teaching strengthens and extends course objectives and changes the

processes by which students meet these objectives and learn course content. The power

of online course lies with the professional educator‘s ability to create a student-centered

15
learning environment where each student engages in the active construction of meaning,

drawing upon myriad internal and external factors affecting student learning in online

environments.

16
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