Dr. Lorraine Beaudin and joerdis
This article is based on an interview conducted in June 2018.
Dr. Lorraine Beaudin (Faculty of Education) appreciates the fact that teaching online encourages and facilitates self-directed learning in her Education students. Considering herself “more of a facilitator on the side”, she plans activities for her students that support them in their individual academic quests. The movement to an online environment allows her to create unique and very personal learning opportunities that differ from the standard teacher-focused classroom interactions in noticeable ways. Read on to learn more about the relationship-building approach Lorraine takes to teaching online.
TC: What motivated you to design and teach courses online?
It all started with a course called ‘The Internet and Education’ which I taught for the first time online in 1998. It involved quite a bit of coding at the time. Creating a website wasn’t as convenient as it is today, but I had made a deliberate choice to teach online because I saw great potential in that modality for both – my students and myself.
My teaching has always been grounded in a constructivist understanding of learning. I consider myself more of a facilitator on the side, who needs to plan activities for her students to encourage them in their individual academic quests. The movement to an online environment allowed me to do that by creating unique learning opportunities that differed from the standard teacher-focused classroom interactions in noticeable ways. The biggest draw for the students was, of course, the flexibility online learning afforded them. There is the individual pacing that goes with it as well as the choice of time and place for the academic work to be completed. What appealed most to me, on the other end, was the opportunity to create personalized learning settings. In the online environment, I am no longer standing in front of the students taking them through the same set sequence of learning activities. Instead, technology allows me to create learning modules that offer my students choices in accordance with what their academic interests and needs are. I can also more easily connect with “quieter” students who would seek to hide in a face-to-face environment.
TC: What do you consider essential for the planning of such individualized learning online?
Although the complete list of planning essentials has changed over time, I still always start out from the 4 C’s of learning, i.e. critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity. I want my students to think critically about the content, so often I add content and then I add questions to encourage them to think critically about the content and/or how it relates to their future teaching. Given the emergence of content creation tools, I also want them to be able to show their understanding of content in ways that are meaningful to them. When I start planning an online course, I ask myself what elements in the c