My second first impression of online teaching: A reflective narrative

In this presentation I will talk about my recent experience of online teaching and will compare it with my former experience of traditional (face-to-face) teaching in the past. Needless to say, you will find many similarities between what I present in this talk and what you have already experienced in this context or heard from other people with similar background. Nonetheless, I hope this talk will be an introduction for further dialogue and discussion based on people’s lived experiences of online learning and teaching. I have categorised my narrative reflection into seven themes including: freedom and flexibility, facilities and facilitators, feedback process, teaching preparation, clarification, peer learning, and online presence. According to my experience, the first benefit of the online context is freedom and flexibility of learning and teaching for both learners and teachers. This freedom has several aspects including time, place, interaction and content.
The second theme is facilities and facilitators. In my opinion, ICT facilities are only beneficial if we have motivated and innovative facilitators. By facilitators I mean all stakeholders who have some kinds of responsibilities in the process of learning and teaching such as subject coordinators, ICT experts and administrative staff. I believe comparing to the traditional education, we need more collaboration in the online environment to create a collaborative learning environment.
Feedback process in this context also needs to be more tangible and transparent comparing to the face-to-face education. Because, this is one of the key areas that we can help students to improve their learning performance. Similarly, teaching preparation has a higher level of significance in online teaching because almost everything for a subject should be fully prepared a few weeks before the beginning of a session. Clarification is the fifth category in my list which has several aspects including clear learning outcomes, clear expectations, and clear ways of communications and I will discuss them in more details in my presentation. Peer learning or cooperative learning is the sixth theme which needs more attention in the online learning comparing to the face to face courses. Because learners have almost the same chances to participate in discussions and sharing information and we should take this as a great opportunity to enhance the quality of learning and teaching. Last but not least, I believe our responsive and supportive online presence is another key factor which plays a significant role in enhancing the quality of learning and teaching in this context.