RSA#4 Faculty-Perceived Barriers of Online
Education
Online learning is
obviously here to stay. As the world
becomes tech-savvy, education must stay current with the time. That being said there are a lot of issues
that educators and curriculum developers along with PLC leaders must face. How do you as an educational leader make this
new way of educating work for everyone?
That is the same question educators have been asking about classroom
teaching. The trends seem to change but
the common issue of reaching all learners does not. Palloff discusses collaboration throughout
this week’s readings in Building Online
Learning Communities. According to
Palloff, collaboration is the most effective tool educators have in the online
world (Palloff & Pratt, 2007) . Collaboration, also known as teamwork, group
effort, partnership is an effective way to gain positive results in a multitude
of venues, but especially education. Palloff
shares many examples of collaboration, and explains how to facilitate the
collaborating as the educational leader of an online group.
The article Faculty-Perceived Barriers of Online
Education written by Lloyd, Byrne and McCoy touches on similar threads as
Palloff. The article discusses the
continual growth and demand of online learning at higher learning
institutions. According to the article,
institutions are now seeing a change in the delivery of courses; the amount of
online offerings is growing and has become a critical issue in institutions
long term strategies (Loyde, Byrne, & McCoy, 2012) . Surveys cited throughout the article discuss
what faculty of higher education institutions believe to be some of the
concerning barriers to effective online instruction. The common concerns noted should not be surprising;
faculty suggested that resources and proper knowledge were of concern. It was later noted that the faculty that used
online teaching more often, were adequately trained and took ownership in their
curriculum had more positive outcomes with their instruction (Loyde, Byrne, & McCoy, 2012) .
Throughout the
mentioned article various surveys and studies are discussed and cited. Interestingly enough the results are then
used to create effective frameworks which are also discussed. It was noted that faculty who had the least
experience felt the barriers were much greater than those that used online
learning regularly. It is critical to
mention that throughout the surveys and studies discussed in this article the
most common thread, barrier, was time commitment. This according to the authors
suggest that institutions need to create a plan that provides release time or
lighter workloads in order to allow faculty to successfully prepare for online
learning environments (Loyde, Byrne, & McCoy, 2012) .
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