Towards a theoretical framework for professional development in online teaching: an instructor's reflective journey of learning to teach online

This Classroom 2.0: The Book chapter can be downloaded at:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/100215758/Peter-Rennert-Ariev-PD-Framewor...

This chapter details my reflective journey as a student within a graduate program focused on online

teaching and learning for adults. The analysis highlights some of the theoretical and practical lessons that I learned about teaching effectively using social networking and how I began to use on-line strat-egies into my own teaching. The program I enrolled in is designed to prepare expert practitioners todesign, deliver, and evaluate online learning programs for adult learners in higher education, profes-sional education, corporate universities, and community settings. In this chapter I focus on my ongoing narrative reflection that was captured primarily in an ongoing blog I constructed throughout the

program. I’ve analyzed these entries for overarching themes and then represented excerpts from thisnarrative that I feel capture the central aspects of my own development: These aspects include: The centrality of having a theoretical foundation for social networking; the architecture of online communities, especially the value of collaboration and mutual construction of knowledge; and the role of the online facilitator. In my concluding remarks I suggest some specific ways that these themes can help lay the foundation towards building a theoretical framework to support high-quality professional development for new online instructors.

Tags: development, education, higher, online, professional, teaching

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