PPEL – Online teaching techniques

Modelling new skills for online teaching, available at http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/brisbane99/papers/salterhansen.pdf

In this article, the authors talk about the use of technology by both teachers and learners. They mention that teachers who have good experiences with technology have more probability of integrating technology into teaching, however ‘traditional’ methods of training are still clearly favoured over online methods.

In online courses there’s the need to provide a clear structure for activities and to structure online discussion groups.

The article states the need of making online activities interesting and relevant to life

Another aspect that is mentioned is the fact that not only teachers need to be trained on the use of technology. Students may be able to access email, but may ‘have difficulty building mental models of the multi-layered electronic’ learning environments (Witmer, 1998).

Students need to have the right and appropriate support in order to achieve successful learning outcomes.

The article also refers to PlatformWeb, which is a web-based teaching environment developed at UWS, Macarthur.