Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes

by Flower Darby

Many of these familiar educational norms do not operate in an online class. Instructors and other students are not physically present to help guide or shape an online student's behavior.

All the more important to introduce, orient, support, and provide connections

Many online instructors have not taken many online classes as students. This is certain to change over time. But at this point, most faculty teaching online have not experienced “the apprenticeship of observation,” a phrase first coined in 1975 by Dan Lortie. The 2002 second edition of his book Schoolteacher describes the unique experience found in the teaching profession (Lortie, 2002, p. 61). Lortie