CC BY
19TEACHING ONLINE GENERALLY. BUILDING A BODY OF ONLINE
PEDAGOGY. DISTANCE FACTOR
Xalliyeva Qizilgul Rajapboyevna [email protected] Yusupova Gulnoza Umarjonovna [email protected] Yusupova Dilfuza Umarjon qizi [email protected] Urgench State University
Abstract: This article investigates the distance factor in online teaching and how the well-known scholars took it into consideration to make the learning more effective and positive process. It also explores the role of an online teacher and the characteristics of learners that are recommended to know to avoid serious implications and negative consequences during online teaching.
Keywords: COVID-19, blended courses, online courses, distance learning, physical presence, transactional distance, a sense of community, online teaching and learning, online teacher, online learner.
It is known that online courses have been on demand over the past decades. As the demand increased at the early phases of online teaching, teachers of face-to-face classrooms simply were assigned to teach online courses with no training and much support back in those years. The course instructors had to learn on their own how to use online tools, such as course management systems. However, many institutions acknowledge that it was not easy to switch from face-to-face classrooms to online or blended courses. Today, the current COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the education system worldwide and it has left no way for educators other than teaching online, regardless of their experiences and wills. Due to this urgent and unexpected challenge, face-to-face university courses have been put in a request to be taught online. Even though online teaching has been a great help during the crisis, many educational organizations, let alone teachers have not still been prepared for it. Because online teaching is not a method that can be learned overnight. A traditional classroom teacher can be effective in teaching online, but everything becomes much easier after hard work, experience and research because teaching online requires different approaches and instructions.
The uniqueness of online teaching is that teachers do not have to be somewhere to teach. Because where the location does not make any difference. Everything can be done sitting in a small town somewhere in the world. There is no need to carry a
heavy bag with a laptop and full of handouts. Teachers do not have to wait for students during office hours since office hours can be held any time, let it be after dinner or on weekends. However, before teaching online with such easiness and comfort, one should know what works well in online teaching in order to build a body of online pedagogy. In the campus class, it is generally known what works well, for example, writing clearly on the board, speaking in a louder voice, being dynamic, keeping eye contact with students, and inviting students to participate actively in discussions. In online teaching, too, as every student likes to have a sense of belonging, feeling included in a group is an important factor for encouraging the true potential for learning to take place. However, generating a feeling of place in an online class is not easy. Indeed, if we think about it, where are our bodies when we participate in an online class? Our physical bodies are indeed located in front of our computers, but our virtual bodies can be found anywhere we imagine. Specialists hold different views about it. For example, according to Dreyfus (2001), learning via the internet in online courses is impossible without physical presence. He criticizes distance learning as being far from education and even inadequate. In his opinion, the body plays an important role in the process of learning and any learning that occurs can be only intellectual, but not pragmatic. He thinks that true learning can only happen when we are physically somewhere, doing a particular activity. Based on his views, it is only under these conditions that information becomes relevant and people start realizing it. However, if that turns out to be true in this case, a question will arise about how anyone can learn from books, television, newspaper, radio, emails.
To avoid any confusion about the online class, the concepts of "space" and "place" are differentiated as in the following by Robinson (2000, p. 112). She defines space as "an abstract container determined by distance, direction and time." In addition, she states that place exists within space as a localized region. When it comes to cyberspace, Robinson argues that it is "the world of imaginary tools, which produce art, poetry, literature...(2000, p. 112)". However, since only authorized people with the password can have access, the computer program creates and defines place within cyberspace, where people meet via the internet.
In an online class, not only space but also the element of time is included as well. In this sense, Robinson questions if her responses to the students' questions posted becomes present for her students when they appear or when the students have seen the post. She thinks that in the online class time becomes space because all her responses posted must be laid out across the two-dimensional computer screen. Concerning this, Bender (2003) believes that the main objective in any teaching environment, whether it is online or on campus, is to be inspirational, exciting, and challenging so that students think about the subject matter out of the classroom. At this point, Bender (2003) believes that it is not the physical distance that should be
worried about, but rather the relational distance between teacher and student. Moore (1984) states the following concerning the meaning of distance in education: "There is now a distance between learner and teacher which is not merely geographic, but educational and psychological as well. It is a distance in the relationship of two partners in the educational enterprise. It is a transactional distance"(1984). Saba and Shearer (1994) explain the transactional distance as the extent that is managed to build by the teacher to successfully engage the students in their learning. According to them, if students are found disengaged and unstimulated into being active learners, a vast transactional distance might occur whether the students are learning with the teacher in the classroom or online. On the other hand, if the teacher can create meaningful educational opportunities, regardless of online or offline environment, with the right degree of relevance and challenge and give students a feeling of responsibility for their learning as well as a commitment to the process of learning, then the transactional gap becomes less and smaller. Consequently, nobody feels remote from each other and the source of learning. Nevertheless, there are some oppositions of how Saba and Shearer (1994) think. Some critics, such as Dreyfus (2001) do not believe that without physical presence along with the information of body language and tone of voice that is associated with it, it is hard to avoid the transactional distance. If it is the case, in campus lectures, the instructor may not be able to see the students at the back of the lecture hall, let alone correctly read body language. In this sense, the solution here is the students' commitment to learning, knowledge, and the pursuit of new ideas, not to a particular physical classroom. Summarizing that, commitment to learning can take place without a physical setting, and undoubtedly, the online class can be effective as a virtual place in order to collect, disseminate, as well as exchange knowledge and ideas. There is a big difference between physical distance and transactional distance and we can see that they are very different measures, because the main goal is to minimize the transactional distance by establishing a comfort level as well as ensuring full access to fulfill all educational aspirations, no matter the class is taught online or on campus. However, it is of utmost importance to state that social dimension, too, impacts on transactional distance. Wegerif (1998) proves it in his interview-based study conducted with students who enrolled in an interactive online course. Wegerif (1998) found out that the degree of success or failure of students was closely interconnected with whether each student felt like an insider or an outsider during the course. This is why learning was seen as a social process since the degree of learning is undoubtedly dependent on if there is a feeling of belonging to a community of practice. Wenger (1998), who is a well-known educational practitioner and theorist, asserts that communities of practice are the prime context in which we can work out common sense through mutual engagement. One student in Wegerifs study (1998) claimed
that the most valuable part that she had gained from the course was when she collaborated with other students and learned enormously from her peers. She also added that a friendship blossomed between her and some of her online colleagues. On the other hand, another student dropped the course before it ended and said that collaboration could never work for her in online classes. According to her, by the time she had logged into the class, the conversations and discussions would have started without her, which made her leave behind the pace and even feel a bit overwhelmed. This process is called social experience, as Wegerif (1998) concludes. The student who participated in online activities and discussions was well motivated. The other one who lagged behind the pace and felt like an outsider experienced online learning as remote and cold.
The National Research Council published an important study (2001), which states the role of a social context in learning. The view taken in the study stresses out that collaboration is key to learning so that students can develop arguments, understand questions, and share conclusions among a community of learners. In this sense, as Wegerif (1998) concludes, creating a sense of community seems to be an important first step for collaborative learning. Without a feeling of community, people feel anxious and unwilling to take risks in learning. The only, but crucial factor that Wegerif (1998) does not address which helps to decrease the transactional distance is the behavior of the instructor because the instructor is the one who sets the tone and atmosphere for the whole class after all. Of course, forming a sense of community in online classroom is not easy, but it is worth trying by personalizing the educational approach. This, in turn, will provide an important step toward decreasing any feeling of remoteness or coldness that might be caused by a computer screen.
The importance of personalizing education is huge in minimizing the transactional distance and it is the teacher's job to personalize the educational approach in order to decrease the level of the transactional distance in online classrooms. The instructors who are much more attentive to individual learners are more effective in this sense since they know that everyone in the class has different personalities and expectations. In this sense, Anderson and Adams (1992) mention some students being field-dependent learners, which means they tend to rely on structure and clear direction. These types of learners are as much concerned about the personality and style of the instructor as the course material that the teacher is going to deliver. In this case, the instructor should consider being encouraging and supportive towards the students, giving ample feedback, and eliciting discussions by being appropriately informal.
In the classroom, an instructor can show his attention in many different ways, depending on the role that he might take. In this sense, McKeachie (1978) differentiates six teaching roles for the campus teacher, but all of them can be applied
to online teaching. Those roles identified by McKeachie can be taken for different purposes and at different times in the semester. For example, the teacher can take one of the following roles:
• A facilitator who helps to increase student learning by motivating active participation in discussions and by supporting the student so that he can see the learning as meaningful and informative.
• An expert who communicates expertise through lectures and discussions, and can stimulate learners without making them feel unable.
• A formal authority who supports students by establishing terms of conduct and deadlines of submission work.
• A socializing agent who networks within the larger academic community and can help students by providing letters of recommendation or sources for research and publications.
• An ego-ideal who shows enthusiasm and commitment not only to the subject matter but to the students as well.
• A person who demonstrates understanding and compassion towards students' needs and requirements.
Good teaching is believed to be modified and adjusted to the needs of each individual in the class throughout the course. As McKeachie (1978) states, "Teaching should be a two-way process in which both students and teachers learn from one another; as long as teaching conditions facilitate two-way interaction, the good sense of teachers and students can be substantially relied upon" (p 255). This means that the online teacher should care about every single student to bring out the best during the class. It is not about giving too much attention but treating each student according to their needs and personality traits. Here, the online teacher is challenged to be aware of types of student personalities. McKeachie (1978) observes various kinds of student characteristics, such as intelligence, independence and responsibility, anxiety, introversion-extroversion, gender, motivation, authoritarianism, and cognitive style. In online teaching, the followings can be considered with some implications:
• Independence and responsibility: an independent student will want the teaching to be much more permissive.
• Authoritarianism: authoritarian students would prefer a considerably greater degree of control and they are likely to listen to lectures.
• Anxiety: Since uncertainty causes anxiety, it is recommended for an online teacher to be supportive, encouraging, and prompt at giving guidance and instructions so that students can do best in a highly structured environment.
• Intelligence: Recent findings (Gardner, 2000), show that there are multiple intelligences and they measure students' diverse learning styles and strengths in
different areas. Some students are good at taking information if they hear it, but others perform better if they act, or if they use their logical reasoning. Multiple Intelligences like these, identified by Howard Gardner (Gardner, 2000), help educators design and carry out their online courses accordingly, tailoring to the diversity of learners in the class.
• Motivation: Being an online learner means that a higher level of self-reliance is demanded, compared to a classroom learner. Unlike the peer pressure of the campus class, online learners need to stay motivated in order to be successful in online learning.
• Introverts and extroverts: Researchers found that when an extrovert studies with another extrovert, they learn better than they study alone, especially while doing research. In contrast, introverts perform better when they are provided with the necessary information.
• Gender: According to a study (McKeachie, 1978), female students in the class are much more concerned with their achievements rather than their male fellows.
• Cognitive style: It is preferable to come into contact more with the instructor if a student is new to a subject area. In addition, if a student does not see the instructor, as in the online class, they might need frequent online contact with the instructor. This is, especially, true for students who are new to online learning.
The above-mentioned student characteristics, such as independence and responsibility, authoritarianism, and anxiety are all interrelated, especially when the teacher decides on if the class should be cooperative or competitive. If the teacher strives for collaboration, which is likely to work best in an online classroom during an online discussion or online collaborative projects and role-playing, this also follows that students have more responsibility and this can cause anxiety for some of them. However, collaborative work can be balanced with independent work and this can lead to much greater learning and the development of critical thinking skills.
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