Embracing Many Approaches to Distance Teaching

I received an email yesterday afternoon with the subject, "Teach online correctly—from the very start." I confess, I was intrigued. I clicked to open, and this is what I saw:

It was an ad for an online course being offered by an organization I follow. I get their newsletter, and that's why I'm on their mailing list for this ad, I suppose. But this fascinated me, because the implied message here is "there is a right way to teach online, and a wrong way to teach online, and you don't want to do it wrong, do you???"

I wonder about this. Would the folks putting on this course suggest that there is one right way to teach a face-to-face course? Or would they take a more nuanced view, that teaching well depends on the needs of the students, the needs of the content, the conventions of the discipline, the affordances and constraints of the classroom, and the preferences of the instructor? Because I suspect teaching math looks different than teaching music--the content alone makes these very different endeavors, regardless of the medium of instruction and the classroom environment!

I view teaching as a craft, rather than a pure art or pure science. Yes, there are some universally valuable pedagogical approaches. And, yes, there are many different ways to conduct our work--different style preferences that we might have as instructors. I don't see this as an either-or proposition. Both of these can be true at the same time. And...I would dare to venture that this is still true in the online learning environment, just as it is in the face-to-face learning environment.

Somehow it seems that some people see "online teaching" as a monolith, that there is just one way to do it. But, seriously...let's think that through. Is there just one way to teach in a face-to-face classroom? Obviously not. Some folks lecture. Some facilitate discussions. Some incorporate hands-on, experiential learning opportunities. Some use inductive, "solve the mystery" approaches. Some use collaborative learning. Some incorporate reflective thinking. Some use combinations of these--and lots of other approaches--in just one lesson! 

And the same is true of distance teaching: there are lots of possible approaches that can be used, just like in the face-to-face classroom. Some folks lecture (via video.) Some facilitate discussions (in asynchronous discussions forums.) Some incorporate hands-on, experiential learning activities (by getting students away from their devices to do something, and then share about what they discovered.) Some use inductive, "solve the mystery" approaches (like digital breakout rooms, or mystery boxes.) Some use collaborative learning (because there are all kinds of tools that can be leveraged for online collaboration these days!) Some use reflective thinking (by writing blog posts, or papers, or student-created videos to make meaning of their learning.) Some use combinations of these--and lots of other approaches--in just one (online) lesson!

Come on...just one "correct" way to teach online? I suppose the one "correct" way to teach online is to match your teaching methods to the learning target, to keep in mind your student' needs, the needs of the content, the conventions of the discipline, the affordances and constraints of the online learning environment, and your preferences as an instructor.

Let's embrace many approaches to distance teaching!

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(This post is part of a series offering tips on distance teaching. You can read more about this project here: Distance Teaching Tips. You can also read all of the posts in this series here: Distance Teaching Tips Series.)