Recommendations from instructors for adopting successful online learning

Abstract

Educational organizations reside at the heart of a society characterized bycontinuousinnovation.In order to fulfi ll their societal role, institutions of higher education must invest in innovation, both in terms of content and delivery. To reach new student populations, to facilitate fl exible education integrated with other activities and to benefi t from the latest technological developments, more and more universities are migrating from traditional face-to-face structures to online classes (The Sloan Consortium 2011).This development is fueled by the needs of the increasingly diverse student population, and by insights from educational research. Online teaching offers exciting opportunities to create an engaging learning environment. Research showed that students preferred online learning for providing a clear structure of the course material, distributing information and more self-regulated learning (Paechter and Maier 2010) and perceived online courses as more diffi cult, yet of a higher quality compared to peers in a traditional course (Hannay and Newvine 2006).Implementing online education requires universities to rethink the entire concept of a learning environment and to reorganize the dynamics of learning and instruction(Garrison and Kanuka 2004). During this process, from strategy to implementation, institutions rely on the most critical link: The instructor, who must be willingand able to develop and teach online courses (Clark-Ibáñez and Scott 2008). While instructors adapt their teaching approaches to online settings, they must be accorded the necessary knowledge and tools to manage the challenges of online teaching. Challenges include considerations of course design (Chin and Williams 2006; Graham 2006), learner engagement (Govindasamy 2002; Van Uden et al. 2014) and technological issues (Derntl and Motschnig Pitrik 2005; Benson et al. 2011).