Many states and counties are utilizing virtual education as a way to diversify course options and to offer students an alternative to seat time classes, but are our teachers being properly trained to teach these classes? Over the last week, I have seen several articles about how teacher training and standards for educators in online environments are seriously lacking. Online education is vastly different from face-to-face and even blended (part face-to-face and part online) learning. The challenges for the instructor are very different in online learning (Quillen, 2010). Right now, most pre-service teachers receive no training in online instruction. Many teachers who start teaching online have little to no training in online teaching prior to beginning (17% received 10 hours or less of professional development in online teaching based on a 2008 report – Ash, 2010).
While most pre-service teachers, receive training in integrating technology in the classroom that is very different from teaching completely online. In a face-to-face classroom, you have synchronous discussions and the teacher can prompt students during that discussion and look at faces to be able to see who is getting it and who isn’t. In an online course, you have asynchronous discussions where the postings may occur days apart and students generally only post as much as they are required to post. It can make it difficult to have a good discussion if you have no experience with it. Also, I have had online classes and have heard of others who have as well, where the teacher had no idea what they were doing which led to a lot of chaos and very little learning.
Many states including my home state of Florida don’t even have endorsement requirements for their teachers to teach online. We have teaching certificates and endorsements for everything else, but not online learning. It is somewhat alarming with the emphasis that has been placed on virtual learning with the recent applications for Race to the Top and other funding and education reform efforts. With all the concern over having highly qualified teachers, this oversight is really surprising. Online education is nothing new. It has been around for more than a decade, so how is it that the education establishment has not made the time to create requirements for being an online teacher?
Ash, K. (2010) Virtual-Teacher training seen to lack consistency. Education Week, 30(4), S8-S9. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/09/22/04edtech_profdev.h30.html?Intc=EL102ENL.
Quillen, I. (2010) Ed. schools lag behind in virtual-teacher training: Virtual education experts say graduate programs to train online teachers make the most sense, at least for now. Education Week, 30(4), S11-S13. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/09/22/04edtech_teachprep.h30.html?Intc=EL102ENL.
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