Learners, Instructors and teaching support staff are involved in different activities at each of the stages of a course or program. These stages may break down (simply) as:

• Getting In
• Getting Started
• Getting Through
• Getting Out

When planning a course or program, its helpful to consider the things that learners will be expected to do at each stage of the game and build from there to consider the role of the instructor and the institution in supporting that activity.  The Learner Support Framework (developed at OLT) is a useful resource.

For instructors new to teaching online, it may also be helpful to keep track of the various teaching tasks that you’ll want to pay attention to in these areas:

• Pedagogical: Guiding student learning with a focus on concepts, principles, and skills.
• Social: Creating a welcoming online community in which learning is promoted.
• Managerial: Handling organizational, procedural, and administrative tasks.
• Technical: Assisting participants to become comfortable with the technologies used to deliver the course.

The CSU Center for Distributed Learning offers some tools and checklists that you may find helpful:

Assessing Online Facilitation Instrument

Facilitation Activity Record.

Both of these tools were developed to assist instructors in objectively reviewing their roles as online facilitators.

Posted: 01|25|10 at 6:12 pm. Filed under: Online Courses, Start of Term, Teaching Presence, Teaching Resources.
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