The dedicated place (real or virtual), purposefully designed by the instructor, in which learners are invited to meet and engage in knowledge creation. Through its design and affordances, the instructor suggests and encourages learners to create their own unique learning environment for optimal learning.
Published in Chapter:
Purposefully-Designed and Mindfully-Facilitated Online Courses
David Starr-Glass (Empire State College, SUNY, USA)
Copyright: © 2022
|Pages: 22
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-8701-0.ch013
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic seriously impacted the ability of educational institutions to deliver in-person instruction. A pragmatic solution was remote teaching, which in most cases was essentially in-person courses delivered synchronously via computer-mediated technology and videoconferencing. Student reaction to, and faculty experience of, remote teaching and learning was varied but generally less than enthusiastic. There was a growing realization that, pedagogically, emergency remote teaching could not satisfactorily replicate either well-delivered in-person instruction or well-designed distance online courses. With the anticipation that higher education will increasingly focus on online delivery, there has been renewed interest, at both the institutional and faculty level, in how effective distance learning online courses are conceptualized, designed, and facilitated. This chapter attempts, briefly but comprehensively, to explore the theoretical and practical issues involved in purposefully designing and mindfully facilitating online distance learning courses.