Informal Faculty Mentoring as a Component of Learning to Teach Online: An Exploratory Study.

TL;DR: In this article, Moore et al. discuss the importance of pedagogy specific to the online environment for distance education courses and their role in supporting the use of technology for online teaching.

Abstract: Distance education has become an important instructional method for institutes of higher learning over the last decade. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, 2003) , during the 2000-2001 academic year, 56 percent of all 2and 4-year institutions offered distance education courses, and this represents an increase of approximately 34 percent over a three-year period. According to the report, ninety percent of all institutions that offered distance education courses used asynchronous Internet courses as their primary technology for instructional delivery. Faculty development programs have become essential to prepare faculty to teach in the online environment. Institutions often provide training for their faculty by way of faculty development. These faculty development activities can be separated into two distinct areas: 1) how to use the technology needed to teach online and 2) the pedagogy that is specific to the online environment. Often, however, the faculty development activities provided by the institution deal with only the technical aspects of online teaching, and how to use course management programs for course development (Beaudoin, 1990; Palloff & Pratt, 2001) . Support for the use of technology must come from all levels of the administration (Moore & Head, 2003) . This includes providing equipment for faculty to use in offices as well as at home (Lynch, Corry, & Koffenberger, 1999) . Faculty who do not have the appropriate equipment to use may not continue with web-based teaching.