Lesson 2.3 Pedagogical Approaches for Online Teaching

Barnes (1989) suggested the following principles of active learning:

• Purposive: the relevance of the task to the students' concerns.
  
• Reflective: students' reflection on the meaning of what is learned.
  
• Negotiated: negotiation of goals and methods of learning between students and teachers.
  
• Critical: students appreciate different ways and means of learning the content.
  
• Complex: students compare learning tasks with complexities existing in real life and making reflective analysis.
  
• Situation-driven: the need of the situation is considered in order to establish learning tasks.
  
• Engaged: real life tasks are reflected in the activities conducted for learning.
  

The instructional design of online courses, taken together with active learning, deals with motivation, challenge, individual learning preferences, and social interaction. When instructors incorporate active learning techniques closely tied to desired learning outcomes, they can transform practical experiences into the online classroom environment. Experiential opportunities create authentic opportunities for sharing and transferring knowledge of information to learners in order to meet the required course learning performance goals and standards. These examples cultivate learner development, build on learners’ previous knowledge, and help learners develop in-depth knowledge and enhance team building, problem-solving, analysis, and critical thinking skills. In this section we shared just a few ways faculty can engage learners by incorporating active and experiential learning activities into online courses.