Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

Strategies For Overcoming Common Obstacles In The Online Environment: Issues In Virtual School Teaching, Michael K. Barbour, Kelly L. Unger

Education Faculty Publications

K-12 online learning or virtual schooling has seen substantial growth in the United States over the past two decades. While the practice of virtual schooling has exploded, the availability of research-based best practices to guide teachers working in these environments is lacking. This chapter presents four cases from Michigan Virtual School (MVS) teachers that examine a variety of issues that virtual school teachers face when facilitating K-12 student learning in the online environment, including strategies to provide substantive feedback in English Language Arts, methods for addressing the demonstration of mathematical computations, using Web 2.0 tools to increase interaction in an …

The Challenges Of Online Courses For The Instructor, Pearl Jacobs

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Universities across the country are steadily increasing their use of online courses. Society's demand for lifelong learning will encourage the advancement of distance learning. Research tells us that today the average person changes careers every ten years. In addition, the U.S. Department of Labor estimates that about 10% of workers change jobs every year. These trends suggest a constant need for continuing education and re-education. The online delivery of education is well suited for this. To be effective, however, there are several required components. This paper will review some of these essential components.

Asynchronous And Synchronous Teaching And Learning In High-School Distance Education, Elizabeth Murphy, Maria A. Rodríguez-Manzanares, Michael K. Barbour

Education Faculty Publications

This paper presents the results of an inductive, interpretive analysis of the perspectives of 42 Canadian high school distance education (DE) teachers on asynchronous and synchronous online teaching. The paper includes a conceptual overview of the affordances and constraints of each form of teaching. Findings provided insight into the following aspects of asynchronous and synchronous online teaching: degree of use; the tools used; the contexts in which each occur; students’ preferences; and limitations. Pedagogy emerged as more important than media for both asynchronous and synchronous online teaching. Synchronous online teaching relied on teacher- rather than student-centred approaches. Asynchronous online teaching …

Distributed Learning In British Columbia: A Journey From Correspondence To Online Delivery, Tim Winkelmans, Barry Anderson, Michael Barbour

Education Faculty Publications

Canada is characterised by a large geographic area, rugged terrain, and many rural communities whose schools cannot offer the same educational opportunities as their urban counterparts. The province of British Columbia exemplifi es this situation. Since 1919, British Columbia has embraced open and distance learning to provide education opportunities across the vast province. British Columbia now has over 50 public and independent (i.e., private) schools offering distributed learning to almost 60,000 students in primary and secondary education.

Today’S Student And Virtual Schooling: The Reality, The Challenges, The Promise, Michael K. Barbour

Education Faculty Publications

Introduction:

In 2008 I was approached to deliver a keynote address at the biennial conference of the Distance Education Association of New Zealand (DEANZ) in Wellington on the topic of today’s student and K–12 distance education. Several months ago, Mark Nichols asked me if I would be interested in putting some of the ideas that I discussed as a part of that August 2008 presentation into a manuscript for the Journal of Distance Learning. This paper represents my best efforts to summarise and expand on those ideas.

As in my 2008 keynote, I want to discuss three main themes …

Design Of Web-Based Courses For Secondary Students, Michael K. Barbour

Education Faculty Publications

This article reports the initial findings of a study that investigated design characteristics of a Web-based distance education programme for rural secondary school students who were unable to access a full range of courses at their school. Discovering the characteristics perceived to be important by course developers and teachers of Web-based courses along with the perceptions of the secondary students themselves was central in this study, which was guided by the research question: What characteristics do developers, teachers, and students perceive as important for an effectively designed Web-based course for secondary school students?

This study was the initial portion of …