University of Essex
Support for E-Learning at the University of Essex
provided by Web and Learning Technology

Supporting Online Learning

Successful online learning is based upon a two-way relationship between student and tutor, but with differences to those of a 'traditional', face-to-face context: students have to take a greater degree of responsibility for their own learning, and tutors need to consider the ways they can support, facilitate, and manage effective online learning.

Taking responsibility

Do your students want to be independent learners? The answer is probably no. Not yet. Maybe... Whilst online learning provides students with a highly flexible resource, which they can access in their own time and from remote, off-campus locations, students are also required to take a greater degree of responsibility for their own learning.

Independent learning is essentially student-managed learning within the context of a structured curriculum with tutor and peer support, and requires an element of self-discipline and time management skills. Independent learning may be described as containing the following elements:

  • self-managed learning: you should provide opportunities for students to monitor and check on their own progress
  • self-directed learning: you should provide opportunities for students to follow content of interest to themselves, to enable deep learning.

Provide Learning Space

Have you provided opportunities for your students to learn online? It may seem like an obvious question, but simply posting copies of your lectures online does little if nothing to support student learning - you're simply using the Internet as an alternative means of delivery. Consider the ways in which you might use the Internet to move students from an essentially passive role of reading content, to actively testing or applying what they have learned.

Establish individual learning contracts

Consider writing or negotiating a set of guidelines, which identifies the relationship between the traditional, face-to-face teaching and online learning components of a course, enabling students to understand what is expected of them and to create an individual ‘learning contract’ at the outset.

  • Skills:
    Detail the technical skills required, and provide training at the outset where necessary; provide advice on study skills required, including time management.
  • Participation:
    How often the student will need to access the course, what the online component is comprised of (i.e. reading online texts, accessing Web sites, contributing to online discussions) and approx time to be spent online. This section should include details of individual input and any collaborative project work. The section should also make clear the tutor's expected participation online.
  • Required elements:
    Detail the required elements of the course. If you are integrating online elements within a face-to-face course, outline the work required and the relationship between the traditional and online components.
  • Assignments and assessments:
    It is likely that not all the online components of the course will count towards final assessment. How do you get students to take the online components seriously? This could be explicit: organise students into groups and set up discussion areas for them on weekly class topics; or implicit: integrate online activities within assignment and assessment preparation: self-test quizzes to enable formative self-assessment.
  • Language used:
    Detail the language(s) to be used.
  • Netiquette:
    Provide a brief guide to expected online behaviour, including rudeness, plagiarism and disciplinary procedures.
  • Support:
    Technical and learning support – what to do if things go wrong. This should detail your contact information and availability and provide details of online support. Encourage students to support each other online, rather than rely solely upon the input from the course tutor(s).

Collaborative Learning

Consider integrating collaborative elements within your online course:

  • Bulletin boards or discussion areas work best when they are managed effectively, rather than a drop-in space for occasional comment. Within Moodle it is possible to create any number of discussion areas, which the tutor has access to, but which could be closed to separate groups of students.
  • Collaborative projects: online learning is often at its best when it enables collaborative work and can help to prevent students feeling isolated.

Further support

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This page was last updated on  15 October 2007 by the Learning Technology Team.
E-mail: ltt; non-Essex users should add @essex.ac.uk to create full e-mail address.