Guest Editor’s Introduction to Special Theme issue: Online Pedagogy in Practice

Abstract

This special theme issue of the International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning provides an opportunity for several University of Southern Queensland (USQ) students to share their understandings of the practice of online pedagogy.The course 'Online Pedagogy in Practice' is offered in the USQ Faculty of Education Masters program. I drew on my doctoral research into transformative learning and my experience as an online educator to design and facilitate the course. My interest in transformative learning emerged from a serendipitous incident which occurred in the early stages of my doctoral study in 2000. On a whim, I attended a Transformative Learning conference in the USA and found myself surrounded by positive, supportive, enthused educators - for me a transformative experience as my educational perspectives were both challenged and affirmed. This set me on a path to find out more about transformative learning and how the principles could be applied to my practice as an online educator. Despite the lack of extant research at that time linking the concept of transformation to learning online, I felt that online settings could provide a 'friendly' environment that would support learning contexts promoted by adult education theorists such as Knowles (1990), Mezirow (1991) and Cranton (2003) - collaborative, interactive learning communities that support and promote transformative learning.While the course is focused on pedagogical approaches to online learning, the main aim is to connect the learners so that together they may explore, investigate, formulate and challenge their own ideas - and the ideas of others - about online pedagogy. The course design draws on existing theory and knowledge relating to the following themes evident in the literature:* theories of learning, particularly transformation theory (transformative learning),* learning and teaching in online settings (online pedagogy); and* principles of adult learning.The design reflects the concept of learning as a lifelong journey where adults have a wealth of experience on which to draw and aims to provide authentic activity that is task-centred, practical and with immediate application to the learner's work. The course design is shaped by transformative learning principles and the concept of a dilemma leading to disorientation and then to learning. According to Mezirow (1991), all meaning is based on the learner interpreting experience with the critical dimension of an adult's learning being reflection, or the process of validating ideas and assumptions based on prior learning. He believes the role of the educator is to help learners focus on, and examine, the assumptions that underlie their beliefs, feelings and actions, assess the consequences of these assumptions, identify and explore alternative sets of assumptions, and test the validity of assumptions through effective participation in reflective dialogue.This concept of a dilemma leading to learning is reflected in the course design where learners are presented with a number of educational dilemmas or triggers - for example, 'how to create and sustain a sense of presence in an online learning environment' - and are provided with a process to engage rigorously with the dilemma content, with each other and the facilitator to explore appropriate theory and related practice. The course assessment requires the learners to practically demonstrate how principles and practices can be applied to enhance online learning and teaching by conducting a pedagogical event in the virtual environment using their peers as learners. In addition, guided by a number of stimulus questions, learners keep a reflective diary of their learning journey accompanied by their analyses of changes in their perspectives and the resultant pedagogical shifts in their approaches to learning and teaching. The course design aims to dispel the myth of the theory-practice divide. Rather than theory and practice being separate and even mutually exclusive, the intent is to demonstrate the interconnectedness of the two. …