Enabling self-directed learning

Abstract

JNUSTA has strived over the past more than a year to bring to light interesting ideas in education, as well as to facilitate discussions about hot-button issues in pedagogy. “From the Desk of…” articles have allowed leaders in tertiary education to share their thoughts and launch discussions on timely topics. The “From the Desk of...” contribution to this issue, by Rosemary Papa and Ric Brown of Northern Arizona University, scrutinises the phenomenon of online teaching, which presents the opportunity for good teachers to “construct an engaging learner-centred online environment for learners to be actively participating in their learning”. They stress the need, however, to be mindful of the pitfalls of online teaching, i.e. the temptation to transfer (and adapt) material from the classroom to an online stage, without engaging the student properly and ensuring that knowledge is properly curated. They remind us that good teaching occurs when each of the components of content knowledge, pedagogical underpinnings, and the interpersonal skills of the teacher are maximised. Thus online teaching is not merely a numbers game in which the reach, i.e. the number of hits and views online, is key. Rather, it is an opportunity for teaching to undergo a paradigm shift, for considering learning styles in designing and constructing the online classroom with targeted assignments and activities. Papa and Brown remind us that online teaching can be a powerful tool in allowing many strategies that we know are useful to be incorporated into online classrooms, thereby facilitating learner engagement: group work, interaction between peers, field experiences, and so forth. Finally, they acknowledge that the onus is on the teacher to equip him/herself with the requisite IT skills to engage the student online. This article dovetails nicely with the views expressed in Lakshminarayanan’s paper, “Ruminating about Moocs” in the November issue of JNUSTA. (Abstract taken from first paragraph of document)