Online Instructor Competencies

This session was out there, but I kind of liked it. He started by asking if there were other presenters in the room and had them announce what it was they were presenting on. A mini-commercial for up-coming sessions if you will. And then he asked if there were any stand out learning moments that had happened thus far at the conference. It was only the second session though so this one seemed a bit odd.

The actual presentation was loosely centered on his journey in working toward competencies for online instructors. He has a blog that should be interesting to watch: Desiderata. The presentation powerpoint is there.

"We tend to confuse activity with progress."

He mentioned he studied Philosophy as an undergrad, and that certainly showed (made me jealous really -- I wish I could speak more philosophically without getting in over my head so quickly).

If I followed him correctly, here are some steps to his journey:

1. First answer: How does learning occur? -- This might take some time, don't rush into it.
   
2. Come up with categories of competencies -- He started with the competencies as listed from the Illinois Online Course Evaluation project (Personal, Instructional Design, Social, Assessment, Technical, Pedagogical, Administrative)
3. Choose which competencies you will focus on.
   

From here the idea is to train instructors with these competencies in mind. We tend to focus on technical and perhaps are missing other opportunities. I'm left wondering if faculty feel they could use some more assistance in other areas.