Examining Teachers’ Roles in Online Learning

Abstract

<p>Online learning has been used in the literature to cover diverse learning contexts ranging from blended learning, distance learning, virtual learning and web-enhanced learning. Many aspects of online learning have become the focuses of research and teacher roles are one of them. The present study, therefore, intends to examine how 153 university students perceived the roles of their teachers in online learning of a blended English course by using a 27-item and 5-Likert-scale questionnaire (the STRI). Results of statistical analyses showed that the Cronbach’s Alpha value of the entire questionnaire was .955 and those of the three sub-roles were all above .891, indicating that both the questionnaire and the three factors of sub-roles were reliable and valid. Further analyses revealed that the three sub-roles of teachers, i.e., the cognitive role, the affective role and the managerial role, were significantly different from each other. Among them, the means of the managerial role was significantly higher than that of the cognitive role while the means of the affective role was the lowest. Results of descriptive statistics also revealed that keeping a record of students’ learning in the managerial role was quite notable for students. The findings suggest that the roles of teachers in online learning as a whole were reduced. However, the managerial role was more notable than the other two roles and the affective role was the least impactful in the online learning context in this study. The researcher believes that these findings may offer some insights to classroom implications and provide the basis for future studies of comparing teacher roles across different educational contexts.</p>

Role of teachers in achieving distance learning outcomes

“…Not only that, the role of the teacher as a guide, giving direction, and giving feedback is also very much needed during distance learning, because this role can increase the enthusiasm and enthusiasm of students (Huang, 2018). The managerial role of teachers during distance learning is also very important, where teachers must be able to supervise their students by interacting during distance learning to find out the extent of their students' cognitive development while studying at home (Huang, 2018).…”

Examining Instructors’ Roles in Facilitating Students’ Learning Process in Pedagogical Information and Communication Technology Massive Open Online Course

“…Several studies outline different roles that an online course instructor performs to facilitate teaching-learning practices [1,[21][22][23]. Online course instructors may perform a pedagogical role [2,24], managerial role [1,25], or facilitating role [26]. The pedagogical role, for Maor [24], is concerned with micro-level practices such as stimulating discussion, raising questions, promoting interactions, providing feedback, synthesizing students' comments, and referring to resources.…”

Information and Communication Technology in Higher Education: Online Experience of Faculty

“…In any case, everyone tends to use potential methods for school education. By the view of the existing limitations, elearning makes teaching adaptable and learning easier (Huang, 2018). Innovative progress is definitely changing the way people accept it.…”

“…Countless universities abroad are changing from traditional eye tracking courses to completely online courses. Online teaching, usually called distance training or web-based teaching, is currently the latest and most famous type of distance training (Huang, 2018). Recently, it has become a vital part of many university courses.…”

“…Researchers believe that the development of online courses and curriculum products is changing the composition of teachers and the nature of education. Clarifying the role of teachers poses a huge challenge to analysts and experts (Huang, 2018).…”