BRIDGING INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARIES- INTEGRATING AND MENTORING TEACHING ROLES IN AN ONLINE ENVIRONMENT

In many educational institutions worldwide, online student numbers have grown steadily and changing student expectations have emerged. One impact has been that staff workloads have increased and diversified. Researchers and online teaching practitioners at USQ have acknowledged that high quality online teaching is time and labour intensive. A critical principle of USQ online pedagogy is that the “human” touch must be created and maintained throughout the learning experience and students should feel they are members of a facilitated, interactive learning community. To maintain a high quality level of interaction as student numbers have increased, there has been a need to draw on additional educators to teach the online courses. The Department of Further Education and Training within the Faculty of Education at USQ has had to look beyond the finite pool of on-campus staff and integrate tutors from both national and international arenas with on-site educators. This paper reflects on the experiences in the Department in terms of employing external online tutors, the organisational and administrative structures that have been put in place, and th