Role of Teachers in the world of online education

Distance Learning : Role of Teachers in the world of online education by Gen Wright

With the proliferation of internet and especially Web 2.0, a vast number of services and products are available to consumers at the click of a mouse. Retail stores or e-marts selling products ranging from used furniture to books and computer hardware lead the pack of online commerce activities. This has extrapolated to other traditional services also. Online teaching or tutoring is one such domain where huge progress has been made and it has successfully invoked widespread interest worldwide. Online learning can be broadly classified into two categories:

i)Peer to Peer learning, and ii)Normal Instructor to student learning.

There has been a plethora of forums and groups or communities on social networking sites which have given a whole new meaning to collaborative learning. You have the ability now to reach like minded people, pursuing similar interests instantly, no matter what part of world they are located. Pagalguy is one such popular forum for MBA aspirants in India.

On the other side is the teacher to student channel, which I would say is not as richly developed or popular as peer to peer groups. Though online tutoring is happening a lot now.

Amidst all this, the teachers, I believe have not become part of the online learning bandwagon as much as the students have. The dynamics of the learning processes of students all over the world has changed a lot, thanks to the internet bang.

Are the teachers going to leverage on the web to form a group of academicians and experts, and allow themselves to evolve online?

The role of teachers haven't diminished over the last few decades, but surely the internet is a sort of a competitor to them, though in no way a threat at present (this may or may not hold true in future). But teachers surely need to make internet an important part of their scheme of things in educating the students and shaping the future society for the good.

A typical student spends a lot of time on the web researching for facts and information, generally cross verifying what he or she has been taught in the school. Normally students tend to get bored with the classroom text books and seek solace in the exciting online mode of learning. Teachers on their part have to keep abreast on how to leverage the web to make the whole learning process more exciting, and not necessarily fret over students migrating to the web from the books. Though a complete replacement of the book seems difficult in immediate future.

In the end what I wanted to lay emphasis on is that if students can embrace the web in different forms for different needs, teachers would have to do so. For once the teacher will have to follow the pupil!

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