Tammy Hall encourages first-time online instructors to ready themselves for any and all student questions on the first day of class, knowing that no amount of prep can fend off queries that might, temporarily, stump the new teacher.
Hall, who is director of academic services for the Louisiana Community & Technical College System [1] (LCTCS)—which includes 16 colleges throughout the state—has overseen a program aiming to hone online instructors’ teaching skills as more students gravitate toward web-based classes.
The seven-week pilot program that launched in October helps educators make the shift from the traditional classroom to an online forum and teaches them how to use social media and other tools to communicate with students.
Even instructors who prefer face-to-face classes need to have basic training as online instructors, Hall said, and recent research supports her case: Enrollment in online college courses climbed by 21 percent last year, compared to a 2-percent overall increase in higher-education enrollment, according to an annual survey of online programs [2] published by the Sloan Consortium.