Main Body
Competencies For Teaching With Rich Media
Overview
The richness of realtime face-to-face communication enables participants to cue each other when there is a gap or an agreement in understanding, certainty, or coherence when a message is conveyed.
In contrast, asynchronous text-based or pre-recorded media is semantically poor because the points of engagement with the receiver are detached from the non-verbal cues of the sender. Mediated messages operate “cuelessly.”
While asynchronous online communication is strong in its ability to extend a message to reach more people, its advantages are offset by learners’ struggle to make sense of information in the absence of an in-person communicator.
Online instructors should be knowledgeable of the various ways information can be communicated and how it can be presented in an online course in a way that supports learners’ need for certainty, clarity, relevance, and meaning as learners form mental models.
And since online instructional material is, by nature, delivered electronically through the Internet, it is incumbent on online instructors to know how to use common Web tools and to use the proper vernacular to describe online tasks and processes.
Why create a set of competencies for teaching with rich media?
We assume in this chapter that online instructors who participate in professional development for teaching with rich media are already initiated into teaching online in general. This is to say that there are critical skills and knowledge that are prerequisite to one’s readiness to teach online using rich media. These include:
- Acculturation to being present online as an asynchronous facilitator of learning rather than the live physical center of attention in a classroom.
- Acclimation to using a computing device and an LMS as the primary access points for course content, student communication, and content authoring.
- Reconciliation with the distinct differences, assumptions, and needs of students who choose to take online courses compared to those who take F2F courses.
We grant that it is reasonable that an instructor can complete training to teach an online course and then teach effectively without using rich media.
However, given the unique affordances of rich media and the potential advantages they hold for learners, we make the case that proficiency in using rich media should be a required component of online instructor training at some point in an instructor’s longterm professional development plans.
The TPACK framework: A motive for designing a set of competencies
A discussion about teaching with rich media should include acknowledging the foundation principles of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Framework (TPACK) framework as a motive for constructing a set of competencies related specifically to teaching with rich media.
TPACK is the basis of effective teaching with technology, requiring an understanding of the representation of concepts using technologies; pedagog