Brindley. J. and Paul, R. (2013) Understanding the building blocks of online learning: Through the writings and research of pre-eminent online learning expert, Dr. Tony Bates Sudbury ON: Contact North, October 2
It was Mark Twain who complained in this way about a premature obituary in the New York Journal. While not quite an obituary, the Contact North post is the first in a series of eight that looks at my perspectives and advice on key issues in online learning, based, as each post unkindly points out, on my nearly 50 years of working for change and reform in post-secondary education. This series was researched and developed by Contact North | Contact Nord Research Associates, Dr. Jane Brindley and Dr. Ross Paul.
This first post discusses my views on the drivers of change in the way we teach and learn, and on the role of online learning.
It also summarizes the posts that are to follow under the heading of the Seven Key Building Blocks of Online Learning:
- planning for effective teaching with technology
- how emerging pedagogies map onto the new technologies
- how faculty can support learner success
- how faculty can ensure quality in an online learning environment
- guidelines for faculty from educational technology research
- costing considerations for hybrid and online courses
- institutional and faculty roles in strategic planning.
Contact North will be publishing one post every two weeks in this series.
Comment
Although I agreed to this project, and indeed have seen and commented on all the drafts for the series, you can perhaps tell that I am slightly embarrassed by the whole thing. Jane and Ross have done an amazing job pulling together an amorphous set of resources scattered through many blog posts, journal articles and books into a series of coherent posts that are directed clearly at the interests of faculty and instructors. I think the series will be particularly useful for those poor post-graduate students who have been given my books as set readings to wade through, and for instructors dipping their toes into online learning for the first time. I am immensely grateful to and honoured by Contact North for developing and promoting this series.
The main reason for my embarrassment is that most of the stuff in the posts is not my original work. Like everyone in academia, I stand on the shoulders of giants. (Interesting to note that this quotation was used by Isaac Newton in his introduction to Principia Mathematica – and he plagiarized the quote from someone else!) So all I have done in most of my writing is to pull together other people’s research and writings, and I am still concerned that this does not come across strongly enough in the series. You will also not find any critique or criticism of my work in this series, so please use the comment section after each post. Nevertheless, I respect Contact North’s desire for simplicity and clarity.
So I hope you will follow the series and more importantly (since regular readers of this blog are more than likely to be familiar with the material), direct colleagues, instructors new to online learning, and post-graduate students studying online learning, to this series of posts.
In the meantime THIS IS NOT THE END!
What’s next?
- I’m off to Argentina tomorrow to give a keynote at the Argentine National Network for Distance Education in Higher Education conference in Mendoza, plus a few days sightseeing and tango dancing in Buenos Aires
- I will be at the COHERE conference October 24-25 in Surrey, BC, when I get back.
- I am a keynote speaker at the Transatlantic Science Week being organized by the Norwegian Embassy in Washington DCon November 12-13. The aim is to promote collaboration between research, innovation and educational institutions and organizations in the US, Canada and Norway
- I will also be going to Lyon, France, on 25-26 November for the Entretiens Jacques Cartier,
- I will then continue from Lyon to Lisbon for the ICDE Presidents’ SCOP conference on Leadership for Change in a Time of Openness on November 28-29.
I will continue my blog as best I can while travelling, including the series on productivity and online learning (the next will look at the issues around scaling learner-instructor interactions).
I’m also working on a new book called provisionally ‘Teaching in a Digital Age’ which is due out next year.
So yes, I’m still alive.
Dr. Tony Bates is the author of eleven books in the field of online learning and distance education. He has provided consulting services specializing in training in the planning and management of online learning and distance education, working with over 40 organizations in 25 countries. Tony is a Research Associate with Contact North | Contact Nord, Ontario’s Distance Education & Training Network.
