2.4 What are the competencies of an online educator?
2.4 What are the competencies of an online educator?
In the #Openteach report on the literature around online teaching: Teaching online is different: perspectives from the literature we looked in detail at the competencies of an online educator, a synopsis of the key literature is presented in this section (Ní Shé, Farrell, Brunton, Costello, Donlon,Trevaskis, Eccles, 2019).
An early study on the characteristics of effective online educators was Chickering and Gammon (1987) who distilled seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education and their implementation in technology enhanced education. These principles are: (1) encourage student-faculty contact; (2) encourage cooperation among students; (3) encourage active learning; (4) give prompt feedback; (5) emphasise time on task; (6) communicate high expectations; (7) respect diverse talents and ways of learning (Gorsky & Blau, 2009).
To some extent these characteristics are summarised in the quote from Gorsrky and Blau (2009), “teaching effectiveness may be defined as how an instructor can best direct, facilitate and support students toward certain academic ends, such as achievement and satisfaction” (p. 1). In their study, Gorsky and Blau (2009) compared two instructors’ facilitation of an online course using the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model as a research framework. They found that the instructor who was most highly rated by the students had a greater teaching and social presence and a faster response time. Timely responses by educators in all aspects of the teaching and learning process leads to better outcomes (Martin, Ritzhaupt, Kumar, & Budhrani, 2019). According to Coker (2018) student engagement and interaction needs to be supported to ensure effective facilitation of online courses.
Much of the literature on the competencies required by an online educator refers to the functions or skills required to complete a specific role. Abdous (2011, 2011, p. 64) used the definition of competency as being the “knowledge, skills, ability, and attitudes required to effectively perform roles”. Competencies are intrinsically linked to roles. Goodyear et al. (2001) documented roles, the main tasks associated with each role and the competencies required to carry out those tasks. However, the literature on roles and competencies considers that competencies are context specific or socially situated (Alvarez et al., 2009; Baran et al., 2011; González-Sanmamed et al., 2014). In addition, educators may share responsibility for the delivery of the online course with other staff such as instructional designers, and thus need not necessarily be skilled in the associated competencies (Alvarez et al., 2009; Baran et al., 2011).
From the literature, we distilled the following competencies:
Competencies for effective online teaching.
| Feature | Effective online teaching | Competencies |
| Social Presence | Encourages student-faculty contact which establishes presence that will encourage a supportive