This is a presentation that I gave to student teachers at Ningbo Polytechnic on effective online presentation and communication skills. I decided to broaden the presentation out a bit to talk about effective teaching online.

1. Effective Online Communication and
Presentation
Dr. Iain Doherty
Associate Professor
Director eLearning Pedagogical Support Unit
Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and
Learning
13th May 2012

2. Introduction
• Overview
• Teaching Online
• Roles That Teachers Can Take
• Characteristics of Effective Teachers
• Teaching Online
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3. Teaching Online
• Teaching online is both the same as and different
from teaching in a face to face situation.
• Teachers still need to develop learning outcomes,
develop a course, specify design activities, provide
resources and design assessments.
• However at a “fine grained level” (Oliver, 2006) things
are different as resources are digital, communication
is often through typing and assessments are marked
and returned electronically.
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4. Roles Teachers Can Take
• Roles that teachers can take:
– We are used to the idea of the teacher conveying
information or as the "sage on the stage".
– There is also the concept of the "guide on the side"
which indicates that the teacher sits alongside students
in order to facilitate learning.
– The meddler in the middle is a concept which indicates
that the teacher is a co-worker with students,
discovering a certain amount of new information with
students.
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5. Characteristics of the Effective Teacher
• Think as well about how these qualities can be
realized online:
• Caring;
• Fairness;
• Attitude towards the teaching profession;
• Social interactions with students;
• Promotion of enthusiasm & motivation for learning;
• Reflective practice. (Stronge, Tucker, & Hindman,
2004, pp.32-35).
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6. 7 Principles for Good Practice
• We need a way to think about teaching practices,
teaching roles and the affective qualities of teachers
in an online environment.
• This could get very complicated but in the end
teachers are not looking for complicated answers.
• So, one way to approach this problem is to look at
the Seven Principles for Good Practice in
Undergraduate Education.
• http://www.tltgroup.org/programs/seven.html
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7. 7 Principles for Good Practice
• Good Practice Encourages Contact Between
Students and Faculty. This is part of connecting with
students in order to facilitate learning:
– Tasks that require the use of communication
technologies particularly email, discussion boards, chat
rooms, Skype
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8. 7 Principles for Good Practice
• Good Practice Develops Reciprocity and Cooperation
Among Students. When students cooperate they are
exposed to multiple perspectives whilst also having
to learn skills necessary to work together:
– Group work that makes use of collaborative tools
including wikis, peer groups, blogs, discussion boards
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9. 7 Principles for Good Practice
• Good Practice Uses Active Learning Techniques.
Research suggests that students learning better by
e.g. engaging in tasks i.e. not passive receptacles for
information. The teacher has to connect with
students in order to facilitate learning:
– Learning activities that make use of tools and
resources for learning by doing (wikis, web searches,
group work), time-delayed exchange (discussion
boards, blogs), and real-time conversation (chat
rooms, Skype, social networking).
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10. 7 Principles for Good Practice
• Good Practice Gives Prompt Feedback. Formative
assessment helps students to understand where they
are with their learning:
– Ensuring that formative feedback is given when using
Moodle functions such as assignments, advanced
assignments, blogs for reflection, and discussion topics
for difficult concepts.
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11. 7 Principles for Good Practice
• Good Practice Emphasizes Time on Task. Students
need to learn to focus on the task so that they can
complete what they are doing in a timely and efficient
manner.
– Teachers can use Moodle statistics to monitor students
study habits including pages visited, time on each
page.
– Activities can be released for fixed periods of time so
that students have to complete tasks within a given
period.
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12. 7 Principles for Good Practice
• Good Practice Communicates High Expectations.
The principle here is that if one expects more then
one will get it. Expectations can be set in terms of the
nature of the activities that students are expected to
complete:
– Marking rubrics delivered via Moodle, discussion
postings by lecturers around expectations, challenging
group tasks using the Wiki function.
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13. 7 Principles for Good Practice
• Good Practice Respects Diverse Talents and Ways
of Learning. Students have different talents and
different learning styles. Some students will be very
good at reasoning whilst others will be very good at
calculating formulas. Some students will learn best by
listening, some by reading and others from
constructing diagrams:
– Moodle to bring students together and to deliver
content using different media.
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14. Summary
• When we think about teaching online we need to
think about teaching practices, teaching roles and the
affective qualities of teachers.
• Technology can be leveraged to put the 7 principles
into practice.
• Moodle as an LMS has sufficient functionality /
affordances to be effective as a learning
environment.
• Really, it’s true!
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15. References
• Anderson, T., Rourke, L., Garrison, D. R., & Archer,
W. (2001). Assessing Teaching Presence in a
Computer Conference Context. Journal of the
Asynchronous Learning Network, 5(2), 1-17.
Retrieved from http://www.sloan-
c.org/publications/jaln/v5n2/index.asp
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16. References
• Oliver, M. (2006). New Pedagogies for E-Learning.
Alt-J Research in Learning Technology, 14(2),
133-134. Retrieved from
http://www.researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.p
hp/rlt/issue/view/914
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