Are instructors essential for distance education?
Filed in archive Online Education Jobs by mstandaert on June 02, 2005
"In the commercial sector, learner-content interaction is often seen as the only essential learning transaction, with instructors viewed as a cost rather than a necessity." With courseware software, online discussion tools, and instructional designers performing many tasks related to instruction, what is left for instructors to do? This question was recently discussed in a Sloan-C forum. In "Are Instructors Essential?" (SLOAN-C VIEW, vol. 4, issue 5, May 2005, pp. 5-6), forum participants cited many roles for instructors, including:
-- Meaning makers: "explaining how and why information is important, helping learners integrate disparate content and make sense of it so that information can become 'knowledge and maybe even wisdom'"
-- Growth agents: "pushing [learners] . . . 'beyond their level of comfort and into areas of improvement'"
-- People builders: "instructors serve as a bridge
-in some situations, the only bridge-between learners and the society in which they seek a place"
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