Online Faculty Proficiency and Peer Coaching

Abstract

By the time someone becomes a teacher, regardless of whether he or she enters the K-12 school system, higher education arena, or corporate training environment, he or she has literally had decades of experience with face-to-face instruction. While new teachers vary in their pedagogical training and student teaching experience, they still benefit from a lifetime of experience as students themselves. Accordingly, most of today’s teachers have a fairly common set of experiences and expectations to draw from when planning and evaluating traditional instruction. This is not so when the educational environment is shifted from the four-walled classroom to the online Internet environment. According to Bork (2002), the results of a survey of university instructors revealed that experienced online instructors had taught between four and seven online courses either partially or fully online. While not an insignificant number, it pales in comparison to the teaching experience of the same respondents (e.g., 36% having more than 20 years of experience and 34% with 10-20 years of experience), as well as the nonteaching history that such instructors invariably had.