BUILDING ONLINE COMMUNITIES: THE LECTURER’S ROLE IN FACILITATING INTERACTION AMONG NON-COMPUTER ORIENTED, MATURE-AGE ADULT LEARNERS.

With the significant growth of online learning in Australian universities, there is need to examine the pedagogy of online learning, particularly from the perspective of the lecturer. Comparing the online strategies used in a postgraduate course on educational leadership of change with a core, undergraduate teacher education course, focusing on issues of sociology, this paper examines the impact on the lecturer and the students of distance learning courses in which a significant proportion of online interaction was mandatory. The following questions provided the focus for this paper; “In what ways can lecturers facilitate greater interaction in the online environment? Can an online community be established among non-computer oriented, mature age adult learners?