Saturday, December 8, 2012

RSA#4 Faculty -Percieved Barriers of Online Education


RSA#4   Faculty-Perceived Barriers of Online Education



Online learning is obviously here to stay.  As the world becomes tech-savvy, education must stay current with the time.  That being said there are a lot of issues that educators and curriculum developers along with PLC leaders must face.  How do you as an educational leader make this new way of educating work for everyone?  That is the same question educators have been asking about classroom teaching.  The trends seem to change but the common issue of reaching all learners does not.  Palloff discusses collaboration throughout this week’s readings in Building Online Learning Communities.  According to Palloff, collaboration is the most effective tool educators have in the online world (Palloff & Pratt, 2007).  Collaboration, also known as teamwork, group effort, partnership is an effective way to gain positive results in a multitude of venues, but especially education.  Palloff shares many examples of collaboration, and explains how to facilitate the collaborating as the educational leader of an online group. 

The article Faculty-Perceived Barriers of Online Education written by Lloyd, Byrne and McCoy touches on similar threads as Palloff.  The article discusses the continual growth and demand of online learning at higher learning institutions.  According to the article, institutions are now seeing a change in the delivery of courses; the amount of online offerings is growing and has become a critical issue in institutions long term strategies (Loyde, Byrne, & McCoy, 2012).  Surveys cited throughout the article discuss what faculty of higher education institutions believe to be some of the concerning barriers to effective online instruction.  The common concerns noted should not be surprising; faculty suggested that resources and proper knowledge were of concern.  It was later noted that the faculty that used online teaching more often, were adequately trained and took ownership in their curriculum had more positive outcomes with their instruction (Loyde, Byrne, & McCoy, 2012). 

Throughout the mentioned article various surveys and studies are discussed and cited.  Interestingly enough the results are then used to create effective frameworks which are also discussed.  It was noted that faculty who had the least experience felt the barriers were much greater than those that used online learning regularly.  It is critical to mention that throughout the surveys and studies discussed in this article the most common thread, barrier, was time commitment. This according to the authors suggest that institutions need to create a plan that provides release time or lighter workloads in order to allow faculty to successfully prepare for online learning environments (Loyde, Byrne, & McCoy, 2012).

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