Teaching Online: New teaching Roles

Online technologies have become an inevitable source of advantage in many contexts, and higher education is no exception. Increasing demand for online courses challenges instructors to rethink their teaching philosophy and adapt the traditional teaching role to create an effective online learning environment. In the traditional classroom environment, the instructor is the main disseminator of knowledge, but online courses allow for a more student-centered approach. When students have the opportunity to take a more active role in the learning process, their critical thinking skills are more readily engaged. In order to provide students with an active learning environment, it is not enough to merely take the face-to-face materials and upload them to an online learning management system. Creation of an effective course takes more planning and deliberation. This can seem like a difficult task considering that teaching philosophies are usually formed through years of experience. The result is often an ineffective adaptation of approaches that have been proven to be effective in a face to face learning environment, but do not provide the same results online. In order to truly transform from Online Teaching and Learning (OTL) to Face to Face Teaching and Learning (F2FTL) one must step away from traditional content delivery models and develop new teaching strategies that facilitate deeper learning. The idea is that the student should take a more active role in the learning process, while the instructor is simply the facilitator of that process. As a facilitator, the main goal is to create a learning environment where each student will be able to demonstrate course proficiency that is aligned with their unique strengths, learning styles and interests. Effective online courses encompass more than a busy weekly schedule of assignments; they require careful planning, implementation and evaluation of online content. Past research has examined the various roles of online instructors across a variety of contexts, crating various taxonomies (for a review see Baran, Correia, & Thompson, 2011). Although such general taxonomies are very useful, they provide little direction for the first time online instructor in the field of business administration. The goal of this presentation is to examine the various activities and roles an instructor must play in the entire process - before offering an online course, during the online course delivery, and after the course has finished. Presenters will share specific tools and techniques used in the delivery of an undergraduate business course