'Can a faceless teacher be close to students?': The lived experience of online instructors in higher education.

摘要

The purpose of this study was to explore how online instructors' personal practical knowledge (Clandinin, 1986) is shaped by their experiences in online teaching. Their experiences are in totally different social, cultural, and pedagogical modes from those of the conventional classroom due to the lack of the physical presence of both teacher and student. In particular, this study focused on how instructors try to provide a sense of "online instructor immediacy" in the process, system design, and interaction of their teaching practices. "Online instructor immediacy" refers to pedagogical, administrative actions an instructor takes throughout an online course to increase the students' sense of human interaction, instructor presence, caring and connectedness, toward the end of successful online teaching.; My focus was on the experience in online teaching because learning by experience is fundamental to the process of becoming an online instructor (Britzman, 2003). Narrative inquiry (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000) was used to explore the personal experiences of three online instructors.; Eight main influences that affected online instructor immediacy emerged from this narrative inquiry: (1) personalized, humanized course design and interaction, (2) ritual interaction, (3) instructor-led instruction, (4) humans---acting agents as opposed to integrated technologies, (5) appropriate class size in online learning communities, (6) theft of the content area, (7) affective and cognitive interaction, and (8) reflections on practice.; The main findings of this study suggest that online instructor immediacy could and should be enhanced in the areas of instructional design of courses, interaction with students, learning activities, and learning materials. In addition, the methods of creating online instructor immediacy should be adapted to the characteristics of Web-based culture, online students, content area, and students' learning styles.; This dissertation study helps bridge the gap between the guidelines for online teaching and the enactment of online teaching by providing detailed narrations of online teaching processes. It offers online educators with instructive models of teaching and guidelines for humanizing and enhancing instructor immediacy in a Web-based environment in addition to the knowledge contribution.