I stumbled across a short YouTube clip of an interview with Gilly Salmon (Professor of e-Learning, Uni of Leicester), and found some points that resonated with me.  I’m using this post just to highlight them:

“It’s always important to drive from a learning challenge rather than from a technology perspective.  The learning challenge is to teach people that are used to face-to-face teaching, how to do it online, there are alot of differences.  You have to actually design for student activity rather then delivery of content.”

“In Universities we have a 1000 years of tradition…and being in very physical spaces…and is based on learning in libraries, lecture theatres and a lecturer standing up in front of everyone. So when you actually put a finger up and say hey there’s a different way to doing this, people find that very challenging indeed.”

“When you are designing for e-learning you have to plan it all in advance. You can’t just busk it as you can in a face-to-face lecture…You need to learn how to facilitate in an online environment which has different characteristics and challenges than teaching in a face-to-face environment.”

“What really matters is not the mode of learning but the outcome for the learning.  Often students in a distance university are working while they’re learning, and they do have to show tremendous commitment.  It’s upto us to pace and create resources that make that easy as possible for them, and it up to us to emaulate the face-to-face environment,  so that they can enjoy being online and working with others, even if they don’t physically meet.”