Abstract
This study examines how best practices in online instruction are the same as, or different from, best practices in face-to-face (F2F) instruction. The book Effectiveness and Efficiency in Higher Education for Adults summarizes some 20 years of research on best practices in F2F instruction. The bases of comparison are principles from the KS&G material and from Chickering and Gamson’s “seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education”. A reason for making these comparisons is that the rapid growth of online instruction promises that online instruction may become the largest source of ongoing higher education. Not surprisingly, interest in assessing the quality of online offerings has also grown. The question is increasingly raised: Are postsecondary institutions effectively “doing their old job in a new way?”. One way to answer that question is to analyze the online instructional practices of faculty with the aid of research on patterns of instruction, face-to-face and online. This paper is abbreviated from a February 14, 2002 report by Marisa Collett, Morris Keeton and Vivian Shayne of the Institute for Research and Assessment in Higher Education for the Office of Distance Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of Maryland University College.
Highlights
This study examines how best practices in online instruction are the same as, or different from, best practices in face-to-face (F2F) instruction
A focus on active learning is shared by the two analyses, with KS&G making explicit the need for critical thinking and including cooperation among students and interaction between teacher and students as ways to foster the active, critical reflection
Three procedures made up the study: 1) a profiling of one of their own online courses by eight instructors by use of a draft form of the Instructional Practices Inventory (IPI); 2) a survey of participating instructors’ experience as teachers; and 3) an interview of those instructors and use of focus groups among them
Summary
The book Effectiveness and Efficiency in Higher Education for Adults [1] ( referred to as KS&G) undertakes just such an analysis. For each of the principles, case studies are cited that apply each principle as effective practices or strategies. Though a combination of strategies normally yields best learning, the most effective practices will differ from course to course, workshop to workshop, or training goal to training goal. On the principle of clarifying goals and paths to learning, it can be helpful to give students a pre-test that is equivalent psychometrically to the final assessment to be used. Developing such instrumentation, is costly in time and demanding of expertise. On a Likert scale of 1–5, with 5 as most effective, the instructor might rate his or her effectiveness at 4.5 while some implementing strategies would be used slightly, if at all (e.g., at 1 or 2 level), and the average use of the list of available strategies might be only 3
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