The current pedagogical trend about involving students in their learning is naturally extended to student-centered learning in e-Learning systems. Likewise, instructional designs are developed to enable and motivate students at center stage to learn effectively and willingly. However, from our ten years of experience in promoting an e-Learning system called TIES in higher education, we have realized that an “e-Teaching” environment for teachers to teach effectively and happily needs to be founded as a prerequisite to successful e-Learning.
We further argue that “e-Teaching” can be developed to be a central idea that is actually more important than e-Learning. The reasons are as follows: (1) teaching is more fun and active than learning, (2) teaching requires more creative and imaginative brain work than learning, (3) teaching creates more value than learning, and (4) the Web is growing as a global brain harnessing intellectual knowledge. A seemingly innocuous shift of the center of attention from students to teachers may transform e-Teaching as a current Web 0 status to even Web 2.1, if we may borrow a trendy word from a recent Web 2.0 hype.
Increasingly, e-Leaning today is defined by terms like Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the context of ubiquitous IT network society. However, the bottom line of e-Learning is defined as training delivered on a PC/Internet to improve students’ learning performance and their self-motivation and self-directedness. Instructional designs are also aimed at supporting students to learn effectively in an e-Learning environment.
Thus, the architecture of e-Learning is clearly focused on students, and we can rephrase such e-Learning as follows:
a. e-Learning is for students to learn effectively and happily.
b. e-Learning is to motivate and direct students to learn willingly.
Although there is nothing wrong with this definition, we are all aware that it is not easy to promote e-Learning in higher education. There are many reasons why this is the case. Some of them are: (1) teachers’ efforts and sacrifices for good teaching are not recognized for promotion or tenure as much as their research performance, (2) teachers feel fear and anxiety of experiencing a new pedagogical tool that requires not only IT but even ICT skills, (3) a machine trouble always irritates teachers, and (4) teachers do not want to be held responsible for copyright infringement of using other people’s content.
Download pdf Is e-Teaching Web Zero or Potentially Web 2.1?
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