Teaching and Learning Online1Running head: Teaching and Learning OnlineAn Examination of Teaching and Learning OnlineCindy SeibelDecember 3, 2008

An Examination of Teaching and Learning OnlineThis paper examines the potential of teaching and learning online and the designconsiderations to support it. While I will begin with a broad discussion of the topic, I haveselected two views to compare and contrast in the body of the paper: a teaching view and alearning view. These views are explored from two different sets of authors and contrast the benefits with the potential risks for learners that online teaching and learning strategies afford.

Introduction

The potential for teaching and learning online can be considered in three areas: improvedlearning outcomes, greater access, and a safer learning environment. Improved learningoutcomes can be conceived as better retention of material, deeper thinking and understanding ,and ability to apply learning across multiple disciplines and subject areas. Greater access has been described as anytime-anywhere learning , room for more learners, the potential for moreteachers and the access to other learners for collaboration . Safety is encountered in the ability toexplore virtually that which is dangerous in real life, such as chemistry experiments and fieldtrips to high-risk locations .Access and safety represent the immediate benefits of teaching and learning online. Thegreatest long-term potential for teaching and learning online may lie in the improvedachievement of learning objectives. The greatest risk may be to promote teaching practices thatcounter that focus. Online learning “may be used to duplicate a mundane educational model of information transfer or an exciting model that stresses students’ collective construction of knowledge as they interact with other students, the content, and the faculty” . Dalsgaard andSiemens agreed and argued this to be the difference between managing students’ and learningempowering them to be life-long learners in their own right.

Teaching and Learning Online3To frame this examination of benefit and risk I have selected three papers to review. Two papers are from a group of authors who discuss the ‘School for All’ initiative in Taiwan and thethird paper is from a different author, Elizabeth J. Burge, who discussed the potential of learningonline from a constructivist perspective . The different authors approach the online learningenvironment from different perspectives: the School for All project was developed and isdescribed from the teacher perspective and Burge speaks from the learner perspective.Approaching the development and evaluation of online learning from a teaching perspective presents a risk that traditional models of teaching by delivering content will be not only perpetuated but designed into the technologies that support it. By contrast, a learning viewacknowledges that learners enter the space with different styles and talents, that deep learningoccurs in a social context where learners create meaning through a reflective endeavour, and thatcontent is a building block of learning rather than the end goal.

The Teaching View: The School for All Project

In 1998 the Taiwan government funded a national initiative to promote academicexcellence in universities. One of the funded projects –

Learning Technology: Active Social Learning and Its Applications from Taiwan to the World

– examined learning through four lenses. The work considered in this paper examines the research conducted in one lens,community-based learning, through a program called School for All. School for All wasdelivered on the Educities platform which provided a web-based educational environmentaccessible to all members of society. The hypothesis in the School for All project was that the provision of supporting technologies would allow non-accredited teachers to be successful onlineinstructors.