This document discusses what leads to successful teaching and learning in a distance environment. It identifies several key factors: developing good teachers with strong content knowledge, structured instructional approaches, and an understanding of how students learn; providing professional development for teachers that models best practices, deepens content knowledge, and allows for collaboration; using instructional design grounded in understanding learning processes and meeting needs of adult learners; and employing learner-centered instructional approaches like collaborative, project-oriented, and inquiry-based learning. It also stresses the importance of effective assessment strategies and ensuring distance instructors have strong content knowledge as well as skills in online facilitation, communication, and learner management.

1. Methods: What Leads to
Successful Teaching and
Learning in a Distance
Environment

2. I. Developing “Good”
Teachers

3. What Constitute a “Good”
Teacher?
• Content Knowledge
- strong knowledge of the
subject matter
• Structured Instructional Approach
- adopt a structured, planned
approach to instruction or
constructivist approach

4. • Pedagogical Content Knowledge
- type of knowledge that is
unique to teachers, and is based on
the manner in which teachers relate
their pedagogical knowledge (what
they know about teaching) to their
subject matter knowledge (what
they know about what they teach)

5. • Knowledge of how students learn
- good understanding of child
development and learning
• Efficacy
- deals with attitudes, beliefs and
perceptions

6. II.
Professional
Development

7. Professional development
should:
• Be competency-based
• Model the exact behaviors
• Focus on deepening teacher’s
content knowledge and
pedagogical skills

8. • Collaborate among teachers
• Use information related to
student learning for teacher
development
• Include opportunities for
practice, research and reflection

9. III. Instructional Design

10. Reminder:
Whatever the distance
education model, it must
be in a specific set of
learning objectives

11. Characteristics of Good
Instructional Design
• Grounding in an understanding
of the learning process
• Grounding in an understanding
of the needs of adult learners

12. •Links between theory
and practice
•Flexible design
•Accessibility

13. IV. Instruction

14. Types and Characteristics of
Learner-Centered Instruction
• Learner-centered approach
(Collaborative Learning)
- team members need one
another to complete their
task

15. - each team member is
responsible for certain part of
the task
- team members help one
another understand how
learning occurred

16. • Project Oriented Learning
- it builds on student’s
knowledge or interest
- it focuses on an issue of some
complexity – project
- it is typically performance-
based

17. • Inquiry-based Learning
- it begins with a learner’s
inquiry
- learners pose explanations of
what they observed
- learners analyze data,
formulate explanations from
evidence

18. V. Assessing Distance
Learning

19. Several Strategies for
Strengthening Assessment in
Distance Education
• Develop standards as
determinants of success
• Measure instructional
performance, not simply
knowledge

20. VI. Preparing
Distance
Instructors

21. What Skills Do Distance
Instructors Need?
• Content Knowledge
• Establish an online presence
• Reading and writing skills
• Effective communication
• Ability to manage learners

22. Thank you!
May God bless
us all!