The different nature of online teaching calls for a significant change in the training and preparation of instructors to play new roles. Essentially, the role of the faculty member or instructor shifts to facilitator, coach, or mentor who provides leadership and guidance for enhancing student learning. Instructors have multiple roles they can assume on line. These include the roles of a chair, host, lecturer, tutor, facilitator, mediator, mentor, provocateur, observer, participant, co-learner, assistant, and community organizer. Research demonstrates that it might be important for the instructor to act as co-learner or participant in online activities. There is evidence suggesting that the on-line instructor must be flexible in constantly shifting between instructor, facilitator, and consultant roles (Wolf et al., 2009; Alfonseca et al., 2006). For facilitating online collaborative learning, it is also recommended that instructors be patient, flexible, responsive, and clear about expectations and norms for participation.
Research also suggests that categorizing the online acts of instructors into four categories-pedagogical, managerial, technical, and social - would be helpful in understanding the instructor’s role in collaborative online environments (Peter et al., 2010; Kirkwood, 2010; Dalziel, 2003; Ashton, et.al.1999). Pedagogical action includes feedback, providing instructions, giving information, offering advice and preferences, summarizing or weaving student comments, and referring to outside resources and experts in the field. In short, the pedagogical role relates to direct instructor involvement in class activities. The second category – online managerial actions- involve overseeing task and course structuring. These include coordinating assignments, discussions, and the overall course organization and management. The third category – technical actions- relate to helping with user or system technology issues. Finally, social actions might include instructor empathy, interpersonal outreach (e.g. welcoming messages, invitations, etc.), discussion of one’s own online experiences, and humor. An important research question, in this connection, would be to explore how different technologies and pedagogical strategies change the instructional interaction patterns and help promote community building.
In addition to understanding the roles instructors play, it is also important to reflect and contemplate the question: what do online instructors really do? Research (Peter et al., 2010; Kirkwood, 2010; Peffers et.al. 1999) reveals that online instructors tend to rely on simple tools such as e-mail, static or dynamic syllabi, Web links to course material, posting lecture notes on line, and accepting student work on line. However, most online instructors do not use online chat rooms, multimedia lectures, online examinations, animation, and video streaming. The core point here is that e-learning supports a more social constructive learning environment wherein students negotiate meaning, and are involved in extensive dialogue and interaction.
On the other hand, the role of the instructor, therefore, is in transition from director to facilitator or moderator of learning (Wolf et al., 2009; Selinger, 1999). Furthermore, electronic learners are more autonomous and independent in their own learning than their counterparts in traditional classrooms. E-learners also have greater opportunities for interacting with other learners, their instructor, and outside experts.
One approach to accelerating the transformation from technology-centric to learner-centric paradigm in CEL is to encourage educational technologists and instructional designers to undertake meaningful and credible empirical research explorations and evidence-based work to address three major questions: does CEL increase learning access?; Can it enhance the quality of learning?; and can this be done without additional cost? Clearly, these fundamental questions relate to the substantive dimensions of web-based instruction from the three important perspectives of efficiency, effectiveness, and cost-benefit analysis. Addressing these multi-dimensional issues would go a long way towards understanding the real “value-added” of online learning and its actual contributions.
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