At first, Social Capital in online distance learning can sound as something quite difficult to accomplish, but the very medium may be a great tool to promote social networking as a motivator in the online learning process.
Even in individual projects, students are usually required to critique the work of their classmates, creating a sense of community and a civic partnership in learning.
The use of multimedia to illustrate and reinforce ideas, enable instructors to entice students to activily participate on projects while having fun. The use of games is another tool that is readily available to instructors and is becoming more popular in the education arena.
Online learning may not be for everyone, but it's the job of the Instructional Designer to create a flexible environment to enable students to painlessly make the transition to an online classroom. Recommending a good book and grading students is not certainly what makes an online teacher a "good teacher" and unfortunately it takes one bad teacher to give online learning a bad name.
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Josie Belliard
Saturday, July 19, 2008
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