The Instructional, Technical, and Psychological Perspectives of Faculty Building Online Courses in Cohort Settings
Abstract
The migration of a traditional course to a web-based environment requires a rethinking of the instructional design, grading methods, group-work designs, technology skill level, and the community building that often occurs in a traditional classroom. Faculty members often lack the technical skills necessary to redesign the course materials for the web environment to meet the high standards they desire and may not understand the pedagogical changes that must occur in the web based environment. This leads to frustration with online delivery and a negative feeling that the course will never “work as it did in the traditional classroom”. In reality, this attitude is fact—the course will never work as it did in the traditional classroom—and must be changed to achieve the desired outcomes in this new visually based web environment. However, since course development for higher education faculty typically occurs in isolation, faculty can become frustrated with the development of new materials for the web, especially when they lack an understanding of how to work in this online medium.