Online Learning: The Difference Between a Course Facilitator and a Teacher

Hey, Teachers!

If you're an online teacher you know that building teacher-student relationships can include different challenges than in in-person settings...because almost all of our communication is written. If you teach synchronously and asynchronously in the online setting, you have opportunities to interact with your students 1:1, but many of our online courses are scripted, meaning, they're created before we get the section we're facilitating, and that 1:1 real time interaction with our students becomes more sporadic.

How do you define online learning?

How do you defend online learning?

And why are you an online teacher?

The answers to these questions underscore our beliefs and values about being online teachers. Teacher self-image affects everything we do in our online classroom spaces, including how we see our students, and how they feel about learning from us in and the courses we often, don't personally design.

Following is an important distinction between being a course facilitator and a teacher, in online learning.

Online teaching can carry a negative association because teachers aren't fully present in scripted courses.

Online teaching can be considered a less respectable position as if we don't do as much or work as hard as in our in-person learning settings.

But the power in online teaching, as with any teaching position, is within the practitioner. It's important to distinguish "teacher" from "instructor" or "course facilitator", both to dispel myths about what we do, and also to increase our self-efficacy and ability to truly be stewards of personal growth and skill development among our learners.

💫Online teachers can retain the power of positive influence. We are the voice behind every written direction, assignment, announcement, email, and post, and in individual or class wide feedback. Our attitude, demeanor, thoroughness, diligence, consistency, positivity, and inquiry can make or break a student's experience in our online course, just like our choices can make or break a student's experience in the in-person setting.

💫Online teachers can be the bridge whereby students move from apprehensive and stuck, to  confident and motivated. We are the teacher-of-record in our online courses. This means we are tasked with the known and unspecified job duties. Although many of us may teach students in courses that primarily meet asynchronously, which creates an even stronger need to build bridges because our communication is through video, writing, and sometimes, phone calls, we are still responsible for creating pathways whereby students can excel. This requires creativity on the part of the online teacher, which includes providing supplementary materials, holding extra office hours, and identifying students who are in need of supports early on so they don't get so far behind that passing becomes impossible.

💫Online teachers can be a voice of encouragement and opportunity. Our courses are only as good as we make them. We want our students to be seen and feel heard. In our communication both individually and collectively, we want to showcase an online setting that is safe to be in and meets students where they are. This means using language that is student-friendly, using graphics and fonts that are easy to read, including closed-captioning on our videos, and identifying where the course might be deficient so we can buffer that gap with additional supports to bring about proficiency in course outcomes.

Online teachers who are absent, don't personalize instruction, fail to build teacher-student relationships, let the course run itself, are aloof, put additional burdens on the student who lacks an inherent ability to progress in isolation, and are merely collecting a paycheck for checking in periodically are not...teaching. They remain course facilitators.

As online educators, we have an obligation to unpack our beliefs and values about both the online setting and our roles within it. As online educators, we should collectively be approachable, consistent, fair, caring, knowledgeable, expert in our subject or grade level, student advocates, investigators, leaders, vocal, strong record-keepers, interested in student learning, available, teachable and willing to grow, and kind.

The difference between being a course facilitator and a teacher in online learning stems from the definitions of strong teaching that have always centered on: the heart of the practitioner. 

If we care, our students will care.

If we are walking alongside our students and monitoring progress, providing valuable feedback, and investing in human capital, students will engage with our efforts as the human teacher in the digital learning environment.

If we reach out to students who are failing while also addressing the needs of students who are excelling, to sharpen their critical thinking and skill development across the board, we are investing in the online learning setting and in the  teaching and learning dynamic, which means we're investing in our online students.

We are ethically responsible for providing safe, equitable, and rewarding online learning experiences to our students. We cannot leave that up to the rollout of modules on an LMS, ignore a student's individual need for personalized feedback and 1:1 tutoring or help, or dismiss the human beings on the other side of our screens. This includes how quickly we respond to emails and posts inside the online course, how authentic we are in our responses, and our degree of involvement, based on the student view.

We are the ones who make a course a class, and if we want to be honored with the title of "online teacher" we need to put in the time watering that garden with the same, undeniable presence we have had in our in-person classrooms for years. We can exemplify our teaching history expertise in the online setting when we reach out to students who are struggling, reteach, explain directions further, assess submissions with student effort in mind, and apply compassion toward our students who are experiencing hardships.

Being an online teacher is both a privilege and an opportunity to teach students who may not have had access to our courses otherwise. We need to recognize and magnify the online learning space so both teacher and students are thriving. This includes being sensitive to learners who are learning English as a second language, accommodating learners who have mental health issues (whether documentation is on file or not), and being there for learners who are anxious about earning anything less than an A.

The way we approach our online classes creates a foundation for mutual respect and cultivation of individual progress and performance.

I've never been a teacher interested in being punitive, eager to mark students down for not showing up, doing poorly, or getting the wrong answers, or enforcing rules just for the sake of enforcing rules, in the in-person space or in the online setting.

To create an online classroom that students want to be in, one that is just as positively memorable as any face-to-face experience, we have to want to be there too, guiding not only skill development and skill mastery, but the most powerful part of the application of "best practices": personal discovery.

Being a course facilitator is no-doubt a role within online teaching, but being an online teacher is about human connectivity and personal flourishing.