In the United States, schools are increasingly offering online distance education, and one of the schools, State Virtual High School exclusively offers online learning. Language, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and the Arts are among the subjects studied and are all available in an online forum. Online learning is increasingly popular in modern societies and educators have altered the way they approach teaching. Instructional methodologies have changed to cater to online distance education and the use of different skills, tactics, and learning activities has been of interest to researchers.

Educators at State Virtual High School (SVHS)

Instructors at SVHS are required to go through an eighteen-week induction program which is split into two parts: a nine-week orientation and a nine-week practicum. The Heafner et. al. (2019) research into the 2013 study of the orientation program for SVHS educators. Training K-12 Teachers for online teaching would naturally be different from training Teachers for traditional classroom and less research has focused on the training of the educators than the online learning platform itself, how students learn and teaching models.

During fall 2013, sixty Teachers participated in the nine-week orientation program to become instructors for SVHS with twenty-four participants engaging in a traditional study program for Teachers. Three teaching candidates participated in a virtual interview upon completion of the orientation program and all three were experienced Teachers but new to online teaching. Each week of the orientation program candidates were required to reflect upon their learning and course content; the learning content included material on the programs of study at SVHS as well as instructional design or methodologies.

 The three main pillars for the candidates were ‘Teaching through Communication, Teaching through Learning Blocks and Announcements, and Teaching through Grading and Feedback’ (Heafner et. Al., 2019, pg. 297). Differentiation was taught as part of the orientation and preparation for specific procedures and ways of SVHS was also part of the program.

 Teaching Online Courses

The orientation program covered the essentials of online learning theory as well as technologies utilized in teaching online so that it catered for the Teachers who had little or no experience with online teaching and were less technologically-capable. To achieve this, the program focused on effective teaching practices and less solely on the online aspect of teaching (Heafner et. al., 2019). What the orientation program was able to deliver to candidates was principles of effective online teaching more so than technologies which would be harnessed during the nine-week practicum.

Heafner at. Al. (2019) stated that they believe that the candidates’ pedagogical knowledge was improved or increased post-orientation program and the facilitation of the program focused on communication and feedback as one of the main pillars which is contrary to the opinion that online distance education is about learning remotely in isolation. Online educators should approach instruction in a different manner than traditional classroom teaching particularly with the use of technologies but also with how they communicate and provide feedback to students. Instruction needs to be in a variety of formats while limited in capacity due to the nature of distance education and different stimuli including learning activities need to be used so that students are engaged and motivated to learn.

 Reference:

 Heafner, T. L., Hartshorne, R. & Thripp, R. (2019). Handbook of Research on Emerging Practices and Methods for K-12 Online and Blended Learning. IGI Global.

The future of Teaching- https://knowledgeworks.org/