The Online teacher has many different roles such as educator, advocate, guide, connectors, experts, managers, coaches and innovators.
As an educator, you instruct students using multiple modalities. Some students learn through visual means, others through audio means and yet others through hands on projects. Teachers have to be able to create visual, audio, text-based and projects to accommodate all the different learners.
As an advocate, the online teacher embraces the different backgrounds of the students. Some students are traditional students. Some students are non-traditional adult students with many responsibilities like a family, a mortgage and a full time job. You may also get students from different cultural backgrounds and you need to be able to understand the different cultural backgrounds of your students and adapt your lessons to those students.
As a facilitator, you guide the learning process of your students. You help students learn the core concepts of the class from the Bloom understanding/knowledge phase to the synthesis phase where students construct their own learning.
As connectors, you create a learner to learner interaction with students and create a learner-centered classroom where students interact with each other to learn the material by engaging in projects, or engaging in interactive class lessons, and learning about the topic in engaging forum discussions. You connect the students and have them bond as a community of learners.
As experts, you are the expert in your field. Students look up to you to learn based on your field and your years of professional expertise in the field. I am an expert in writing composition and ESL and have taught in this field for years. I teach students English writing based on those years of expertise. When I help students with their peer review exercise, I give feedback on their student writing to help students improve their writing.
As managers, I manage the class tools in the classroom. I teach students how to navigate the online classroom and I create and design class lessons that are interactive and exciting.
As coaches, I provide constant support for my students to launch the student career and to provide encouragement, motivation for student success. If students feel nervous because they have been out of school for years or even decades, then it is my job as coach to help them gain confidence in the classroom and motivate them to learn and acclimate them to the college classroom.
As innovators, I adopt new media and learn about new interactive programs all the time to promote active student learning. In 2010, I was the first in my department to adopt Screencastomatic for screencast video. Now, I like to explore even newer interactive programs to make my lessons more real, more authentic and more interactive. I am currently learning Adobe Spark, Canva and other programs.
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