Research building on work of Salmon and Laurillard. The project focuses on teacher education and skills and strategies for success online

Cowan, Pamela

English

Name not available

ESCalatenews 23Dr Pamela Cowan is the course co-ordinator and tutor for the Masters inE-learning at the School of Education,Queen’s University Belfast and is alsothe course tutor for PGCEICT/Computing and Mathematics.She organises and delivers the onlinetraining for student teachers in coursedesign and creation using LearningNI,a regional VLE available in all schoolsin Northern Ireland.ReferencesKreber, C. 2001. Learningexperientially through case studies:A conceptual analysis. Teaching inHigher Education, 6 (2), 217-28.McLoughlin, D. and  Mynard, J.(2009). An analysis of higher orderthinking in online discussions.Innovations in Education andTeaching International, 46 (2),147-160.Palloff, R. M., and Pratt, K, (2001).Lessons for the cyberspaceclassroom: the realities of onlineteaching. San Francisco, CA:Jossey-BassWith the current proliferation of onlinecourses comes a whole newdimension in our learning culture ineducation. The tutor’s role is vital indeveloping and maintaining aneffective online learning environment.Tutors must encourage and facilitatethe use of online tools and supportswhile enabling active participationamong all students, encouraginghigher order thinking skills, knowledgeconstruction, and facilitating learningthrough online forums (Kreber, 2001;McLoughlin and Mynard, 2009).Tutors must be skilled at presenting apositive, professional persona within asafe and supportive place wherestudents feel both competent andconfident to participate, and feel thattheir contributions are valued.However tutors “cannot be expectedto know intuitively how to design anddeliver an effective online course”(Palloff and Pratt, 2001, p.23) nor canit be assumed that they are willing tomake the change to online teaching.This research builds on the work oftwo key e-learning theorists, Salmonand Laurillard, and considers theinterfaces between subject context,tutor expertise and participants’ levelof experience online.  This projectPamela CowanQueen’s UniversityBelfast Face-zine theFuturefocuses on teacher-educators and theskills and strategies required forsuccess online.  Phase 1 of the studyhas involved an online survey ofexisting tutors’ experiences of workingonline and the functionality of theplatforms they have found mostbeneficial to support online learners.The next phase will be following upspecific issues raised in the survey andestablishing case studies of goodpractice which will be presented in thefinal phase as an e-zine containingvideo clips and vignettes.  A mixture ofWeb 2.0 tools are planned for thesephases to establish an active onlinecommunity of expert practitioners whocan exemplify good practice andpromote continued professionaldevelopment of online pedagogicalpractices.  The final disseminationevent will involve a workshop ofactivities which will be disseminated viawebsite links after the conference.  It isanticipated that the findings from thisresearch will contribute to an informeddebate about expectations fromteacher-educators in the 21st centuryand will result in valuable staffdevelopment materials for novice toexperienced teachers and/or third levellecturers.Pamela Cowan: Queen’s University BelfastEileen Winter: Queen's University BelfastPeter Neil: University of the West of ScotlandProject page: Teacher Educators for the 21st Century:Face-zine the Future: Moving to online teaching:http://escalate.ac.uk/6827newsPamela CowanEileen Winter (standing) at anonline tutor event

Face-zine: the Future

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Name not available

ALT Open Access Repository