Virtual and Face-to-Face Learning: Meeting Points

This paper examines how teaching within a traditional classroom benefits from insights and techniques developed through online teaching. A critical assumption underlining the presentation is that much online instruction will be performed by faculty members who, as part of their workload, also teach traditional face-to-face classes. It is important for distance learning advocates to identify and encourage synergistic feedback between teaching online and teaching in the classroom. Being able to demonstrate how an instructor’s traditional way of teaching may benefit from online teaching and vice versa helps contribute to the overall improvement of instruction. Motivation to teach well regardless of format is enhanced if it can be demonstrated that instructional performance improves by virtue of alternating venues. Additionally, inculcating a reflective approach to teaching regardless of modality achieves important pedagogical goals for faculty and students alike. The format follows a journal I kept in my graduate seminar