Teaching Online: A Guide to Theory, Research, and Practice

Tech.edu: A Hopkins Series on Education and Technology

by Claire Howell Major

It is difficult to imagine a college class today that does not include some online component—whether a simple posting of a syllabus to course management software, the use of social media for communication, or a full-blown course offering through a MOOC platform. In Teaching Online, Claire Howell Major describes for college faculty the changes that accompany use of such technologies and offers real-world strategies for surmounting digital teaching challenges.

Teaching with these evolving media requires instructors to alter the ways in which they conceive of and do their work, according to Major. They must frequently update their knowledge of learning, teaching, and media, and they need to develop new forms of instruction, revise and reconceptualize classroom materials, and refresh their communication patterns. Faculty teaching online must also reconsider the student experience and determine what changes for students ultimately mean for their own work and for their institutions.

Teaching Online presents instructors with a thoughtful synthesis of educational theory, research, and practice as well as a review of strategies for managing the instructional changes involved in teaching online. In addition, this book presents examples of best practices from successful online instructors as well as cutting-edge ideas from leading scholars and educational technologists. Faculty members, researchers, instructional designers, students, administrators, and policy makers who engage with online learning will find this book an invaluable resource.

Genres: Education, Teaching, Technology

338 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 5, 2015

Reviews

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book that offers a fresh theorization of online learning. Case studies and examples are presented. But most importantly, there is an exploration of communication, educational spaces and places, and building literacies.

The integration of platforms, teachers and learners is powerful and considered.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me by a librarian friend as I was confiding in her my lack of knowledge about teaching online. I'm regularly embedded in online classes, and I've tried things like discussion groups, posting a video, posting tutorials, making powerpoints with my voice-over, and combinations of the two. And they've never seemed successful, so I chalked that up to "maybe I don't know what I'm doing." I think it's doubly challenging as a guest lecturer in an online class, where you are walking into group norms and customs and have to figure out how to interact in that system, without any synchronous or visual cues to correct course mid-module.

What this book reiterated for me, is that I know a lot of stuff! It covers Frier's banking model of education, the mantra of "don't let technology drive your pedagogy," constructivism and connectivism in learning (which I've even written a paper about), and the SAMR model (which I've used in one of my information literacy courses). However, it was helpful thinking about all of these in frame of online teaching.

I didn't read the whole thing cover to cover - especially the spotlight case studies -- but did skim the whole thing, and focused on certain chapters that were the most useful to me.

[Jesse Ballenger · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are a college instructor who is or is thinking about teaching online because you want to or have to (thanks coronavirus), you will find some of the chapters in this book provide some excellent theory and examples for you to think about how you want to do this. I've been teaching some online courses for several years now and found the book gave me lots of new ideas.

The thing that keeps me from giving the book four or even five stars is that, published way back in 2015, there are some hopelessly outdated chapters - especially those waxing poetic about how MOOCs are going to transform higher ed.

But if you need something to help you think creatively about teaching online, just ignore the bad chapters. This book has a lot of good things to offer.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book provided useful strategies when considering the changes one can expect when going from teaching onsite (i.e., f2f) to teaching online. The book is definitely a timely read given recent changes in postsecondary teaching due to shifting from onsite to online teaching. The book is lengthy and required me to manage my time accordingly. I had to keep reminding myself that this is in fact more of a "guide" relative to other books I have read providing instruction for online teaching (e.g., "Small Teaching Online"). I struggled getting through some of the chapters whereas other chapters flowed a bit better. I suspect this point has more to do with my background knowledge rather than the author's writing style. In each chapter, the author provides recommendations from other individuals to elaborate on points made in the chapter. The placement of these sections interrupted the flow at times as well. Overall, I would recommend this book as guide to instructors considering how address changes that arise when moving from onsite to online learning. But, be sure to preview the table of contents and look for chapters that are most relevant as reading from start to end was challenging for me.

[kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is probably a lot of useful information in here, but it is so incredibly dry that I found it hard to keep at it.