We all know there are good elearning courses and there are bad e-learning courses, just as there are good face-to-face courses and there are bad face-to- face courses.
Since we are talking about elearning I’ll stick with those courses. If a course is facilitated by an instructor, does that make it better than a self-directed course? Absolutely not. Remember, teaching online is different from teaching in the classroom and there is nothing to assure a good face to face teacher will be a good online teacher. But if you have a great online teacher, will that make the course better than a self-directed online course? Maybe.
What is the distinction? It all depends on the purpose of the course. What are you trying to do with the material?
- Transfer information and knowledge? All online course formats can do that.
- Develop a learning community? Now you need your course to be interactive among a cohort of learners.
- Assess skills? Knowledge can be assessed in several online formats; we’ll talk about that in future posts.
- Is it a course to introduce participants to new knowledge? A course to build skills? A refresher course? Each of these goals can be reached in online courses.
Then there are the questions of economics, including resources. How much money is available? Do I have enough trained teachers? How broad is my market and what’s the best way to reach them?
The answers to all of these questions will help to determine what format a course should take, and that includes whether or not a facilitator is needed or desired.
There are fully online courses with facilitators, usually academic in nature; there are hybrid courses where most teaching happens in the classroom and some online; there are courses where only information such as the syllabus, reading list, links, etc are online, but the class is basically face-to-face–I haven’t seen a name for this one; there is the online course where one reads a lot of text and then takes a test; and finally there is the self-directed, self-paced course.
Over the next days and weeks we will cover each of these types of courses, explain their usefulness, their pros and cons, and what you might look for in choosing the right resources for each.
Tags: elearning, online courses, online learning, online teaching
