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Online Learning
Online learning is part of a global movement that harnesses the powerful tools of information and communication technology (some of which are described in our Technology Choices reports ) to enhance and enable the teaching and learning experience. There are many perspectives about the emergence of online learning and a range of terms and jargon to describe it .
Teaching and Learning Online
The online environment offers unique challenges and opportunities for teachers and learners. The challenges of a purely online environment are those of teaching and learning without the physical presence of teacher or student; of communicating and forming collegiate relationships without the non verbal communication clues that support the interpretation of words, actions and intentions. The opportunities are those of learning and teaching unbound by time and place, unconstrained by distance, physical resources or national boundaries. These features mean that online teaching and learning is challenging conventional approaches to learning and traditional pedagogy. ADFA's own Learning and Teaching Online site is a great place to start.
Essentially there are three current approaches to teaching and learning derived from theories and perspectives about how learning occurs and the nature of knowledge:
The emergence of online learning has led to an increasing interest in constructivism, challenging the dominance of behaviorism and congitivism. Constructivist learning environments are:
- learner centered
- facilitate interaction
- utilize cognitive strategies that promote both the individual and collaborative construction of meaning.
For online teachers the questions arises of how to best take advantage of the tools and features of the online environment design and deliver a great learning experience for each student. This means:
- how to present information?
- how to engage the learner?
- how to assess learner performance?
The following key resources help to answer such questions:
Australian University Teaching Committee (AUTC)
Learning Designs site
A now inactive site for teachers and instructors in higher education to access resources that support the development of flexibly delivered high quality learning experiences for students.
University of New South Wales
UNSW has guidelines for teachers that are very useful and reflect a constructivist perspective on what constitutes good teaching. The site also has valuable information on student centred course design.
Southern Cross University
Interactive Learning Online siteUniversity of Southern Queensland is one of the online learning leaders among Australian Universities. A very useful site focused on helping teaching staff consider alignments between teaching philosophy, the curriculum and online teaching and learning.
University of Maryland
Teaching and Learning Activities site
A site looking at teaching and learning activities that are used across the disciplines and how each might utilize a certain kind of technology or a combination of different technologies to accomplish specific learning objectives.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Design Shop site
A site focused on instructional design and the web.
Australian Flexible Learning Framework
The 2005 Australian Flexible Learning Framework site is oriented to the vocational education and training (VET) system offering products, resources and support networks for those working in a technology-driven learning environment. The site has a large database of articles and resources to support flexible learning and teaching.
National Centre for Vocational Education and Training Research
The teaching and learning search page has NCVER and recent commonwealth government funded research into online teaching and learning. This site also provides access to a range of other educational research databases.
University of Hull , UK
The University is a leader in e-learning in the UK and has two informative sites for online teachers: Pedagogy and Communications
The Pedagogy site offers a collection of useful articles by leading online learning academics. The article 'Learning technology and usability a framework for understanding courseware', J. T. Mayes, and C. J. Fowler is highly recommended.
The Communications site has articles about computer mediated communications from respected academics in the field of online learning.
Athabascau University's Centre for Distance Education
Preceedings of the Distance Education Technology Symposium - 2005
Athabascau was one of the first Universities in the world to embrace online learning. This site houses an eclectic collection of conferences papers and audio visual presentations on the use of technology for distance education.
Top articles, forums, blogs, and learning communities about online learning
Learning Circuits is the journal of the American Society for Learning and Development
The Illinois Online network has a useful collection of resources on many teaching and learning topics. Their material on communication is particularly pertinent.
Australian Flexible Learning Framework "Whats New in elearning technologies"
Athabasca University , Canada - Athabasca was one of the first Universities to experiment with online learning!
E-learnopedia, The Academic Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Co-Lab has informative new articles and research papers about online learning.
The e-Learning Centre is home to a large collection of selected and reviewed links to e-learning resources focusing on e-learning in the Workplace, for professional development and in Further and Higher Education.
An initiative of the European Commission eLearning Europa has articles and discussion forums about issues in online learning focusing on European Union countries.
The elearning space and blog explores elearning, knowledge management, networks, technology, and community.
Learning Communities
Online educators are coming together to explore the theory and practice of online teaching and learning in communities of practice all over the world.
European Distance and E-learning Network
Learning Times designs online learning communities and produces programs and events for educational and cultural institutions, non-profit organizations, associations and membership groups. Learning Times has an Australian community of practice.
American Society for Training and Development
American Society for Training and Development has discussion boards, articles, research papers, an online journal and links.
SRI International's Center for Technology in Learning community site focuses on significant issues in learning and teaching, and on the ways that innovative uses of technologies can help address those issues.
Free and Shareable Teaching Resources
- Merlot is a site for sharing multimedia educational resources for teaching and learning online in Higher Education.
- Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization offering a flexible copyright system for sharing creative work.
- This site contains a list of Learning object repositories similar to Merlot and Creative Commons
- EdNA is a collection of free and shareable online teaching resources for education and training.
Study opportunities
There are many opportunities for learning about online education both in Australia and overseas. The Higher Education marketplace is a global one and many local and overseas institutions offer courses entirely online. Here are a few of them: