E-Teaching in Higher Education: An Essential Prerequisite for E-Learning

Abstract

The discourse on the implementation of the digital technologies in higher education settings focuses mainly on students’ learning rather than on professors’ teaching. The little attention paid to the crucial role of teachers in online settings results in a restricted and moderate adaptation of the technologies in higher education worldwide. In most higher education institutions, the new technologies are used mainly for add-on functions and not for substituting face-to-face encounters or for an intensive web-enhanced teaching. This article starts with briefly explaining why most students, particularly at the undergraduate level, are unable and/or unwilling to study by themselves without expert teachers to guide their knowledge construction, discusses the problematics of digital literacy of teachers, examines the main reasons for the reluctance of many academics to utilize the technologies more fully in their teaching, and concludes by recommending some strategies for incorporating more fully the huge array of the technologies’ capabilities in higher education institutions.

Digital Teaching Competence of University Teachers: A Systematic Review of the Literature

“…According to Mattila [16], the result is that, in many cases, not enough attention is paid to the didactic abilities of teachers, especially in including digital skills and resources in the designing of lessons, the creation of materials, and monitoring and communication with students; these are considered to be of less value than the publication of scientific articles. In addition, most of the existing literature on the implementation of digital technologies in higher education environments focuses on student learning, rather than on faculty teaching [17].…”

Evidence-Based Learning: Futures

“…Irrespective of the specific learning design and the learning analytics approaches used, teachers will always play an essential role in online and distance learning (Guri-Rosenblit, 2018;Lawless & Pellegrino, 2007;van Leeuwen et al, 2015). Several authors (Herodotou et al, 2017;Rienties et al, 2013Rienties et al, , 2018a have indicated that beyond designing learning activities and managing the learning process teachers have a social, personal counselling role, whereby teachers provide pedagogical support and evaluate learning progression and outcomes.…”

“…In fact, how teachers are making sense of the teaching and learning practice, its students, and data arising from the complex interactions of students with learning resources, peers, and teachers, has become even more important in the last 5-10 years (Herodotou et al, 2017(Herodotou et al, , 2019Hidalgo, 2018;Rienties et al, 2016a;, 2019Tait, 2018). As demonstrated by a range of projects within the OU as well as outside the OU (Guri-Rosenblit, 2018;Lawless & Pellegrino, 2007), the teacher is the key success factor in making pedagogy and technology work. As highlighted elsewhere in this book in Chapter 2, the OU has a relatively unique approach to teaching and learning, whereby typically central academic staff supported by TEL professionals design and produce high-quality online courses (Jones & Issroff, 2005;Jones et al, 1996).…”

Global Perceptions of Faculties on Virtual Programme Delivery and Assessment in Higher Education Institutions During the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic

“…HEIs in Finland have been operating virtual universities for nearly two decades, which places their HEIs at an advantage when conventional institutions are shut down. The majority of the HEIs in developing nations such as Nigeria, still grapple with blended or mixed programme delivery and assessment, where attention is concentrated on the traditional face-to-face instructional delivery method (Guri-Rosenblit, 2018;Kä llkvist et.al, 2009) thereby making distance learning in lockdown situations challenging. However, in Nigeria, only a few universities adopted the traditional distance learning method.…”