The Online Educator: People and Pedagogy

Who is the course for?

This course is suitable for anyone involved in online education or training, including teachers, trainers, course designers and researchers. While it will help to have a current practice setting to draw on, this is not essential.

What topics will you cover?

Week 1 – Disruption and design

Current developments in online teaching

Navigating the hype about disruptive innovation

The relationship between content, technology, people and pedagogy in learning design

The challenges of meeting diverse students’ needs

The use of personas in creating relevant online courses

Week 2 – Innovation and accessibility

Myths about accessibility and digital innovation

Types of digital exclusion

Finding and evaluating accessibility guidelines

Applying accessibility guidelines to your teaching

Week 3 – Ethical evaluation of online teaching

Myths about researching and evaluating online teaching

Evidence and ethics

Navigating the hype around educational technology innovation

Evaluating research reports

Evaluating your own teaching innovations

Ethical considerations when researching online teaching

Week 4 – Who am I online?

Myths about online identity

The value to educators of a carefully constructed online identity

Evaluating your own online identity

Using Twitter to build an identity online

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to…

Develop personas to inform the online learning design process

Identify the ethics considerations involved in researching online teaching

Apply accessibility guidelines to online teaching contexts

Identify key accessibility issues related to online learning

Reflect on your exisiting digital identity and plan for its future development

Explore ways of shaping a digital identity as an online educator