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While arguments have been made in opposition to online education, there are proponents who are in support of this mode of instruction. They suggest that the lack of face-to-face interaction can be substituted by online discussions in bulletin board systems, online video conferences or on listservs (Blake, 2000). Online education can also promote students' critical thinking skills, deep learning, collaborative learning, and problem-solving skills (Ascough, 2002; Rosie, 2000). Donlevy (2003) asserted that online education may help schools expand curricula offerings with less cost and can help graduates gain important technology skills to improve their marketability. Proponents also argue that online education can encourage non-discriminatory teaching and learning practices since the teachers and students, as well as students and their classmates typically do not meet face-to-face. Palloff and Pratt (1999) have concluded that because students cannot tell the race, gender, physical characteristics of each other and their teachers, online education presents a bias-free teaching and learning environment for instructors and students.

academic dishonesty of online learners (Muirhead, 2000)

several factors that may deter faculty from teaching online.

lack of professional prestige

While many critics have suggested that there is no sure way to hold students accountable for academic dishonesty, Heberling (2002) concluded that while maintaining academic integrity in the online instructional setting may be a challenging, many strategies may be employed to detect and prevent plagiarism, such as reversing an Internet search, tracking back to an original source.

10 keys to quality online learning

Knowledge is constructed, not transmitted. Students can take full responsibility for their own learning. Students are motivated to want to learn. The course provides “mental white space” for reflection. Learning activities appropriately match student learning styles. Experiential, active learning augments the Web site learning environment, Solitary and interpersonal learning activities are interspersed. Inaccurate prior learning is identified and corrected. “Spiral learning” provides for revisiting and expanding prior lessons, The master teacher is able to guide the overall learning process. (p. 6-17)

Alley and Jansak (2001)

In integrating these major theories of knowledge, we moved through three steps. First, we attempted to describe, for each of Gardner's intelligences, a set of four learning processes or abilities, one for each of the four learning styles. For linguistic intelligence, for example, the Mastery style represents the ability to use language to describe events and sequence activities; the Interpersonal style, the ability to use language to build trust and rapport; the Understanding style, the ability to develop logical arguments and use rhetoric; and the Self-expressive style, the ability to use metaphoric and expressive language.

In MI theory, I begin with a human organism that responds (or fails to respond) to different kinds of contents in the world. . . . Those who speak of learning styles are searching for approaches that ought to characterize all contents (p. 45).

Learning styles are not fixed throughout life, but develop as a person learns and grows.

The following are some strengths of learning-style models

They tend to focus on how different individuals process information across many content areas.

They recognize the role of cognitive and affective processes in learning and, therefore, can significantly deepen our insights into issues related to motivation.

They tend to emphasize thought as a vital component of learning, thereby avoiding reliance on basic and lower-level learning activities.

Learning-styles models have a couple of limitations. First, they may fail to recognize how styles vary in different content areas and disciplines.

Second, these models are sometimes less sensitive than they should be to the effects of context on learning.

Emerging from a tradition that viewed style as relatively permanent, many learning-style advocates advised altering learning environments to match or challenge a learner's style. Either way, learning-style models have largely left unanswered the question of how context and purpose affect learning.

But learning styles emphasize the different ways people think and feel as they solve problems, create products, and interact.

The theory of multiple intelligences is an effort to understand how cultures and disciplines shape human potential

Though both theories claim that dominant ideologies of intelligence inhibit our understanding of human differences, learning styles are concerned with differences in the process of learning, whereas multiple intelligences center on the content and products of learning. Until now, neither theory has had much to do with the other

Mehrabian (1967) defined immediacy as the extent to which selected communicative behaviors enhance physical or psychological closeness in interpersonal communication.

Anderson (1979) summarizes the impact of immediacy: The more immediate a person is, the more likely he/ she is to communicate at close distances, smile, engage in eye contact, use direct body orientations, use overall body movement and gestures, touch others, relax, and be vocally expressive. In other words, we might say that an immediate person is perceived as overtly friendly and warm (p. 545).

“Knowledge building occurs as students explore issues, examine one another’s arguments, agree, disagree, and question positions. Collaboration [learner-learner interaction] contributes to higher order learning through cognitive restructuring or conflict resolution, in which new ways of understanding the material emerge as a result of contact with new or different perspectives” (p. 55)

Kearsley (2000) declared: “The most important role of the instructor in online classes is to ensure a high degree of interactivity and participation” (p. 78)

A teacher’s ethical caring means genuine caring, aspiring to understand and make an effort for pupils’ protection, support, and development. Because of this pedagogical caring, the teacher especially pursues pupils’ potential to develop and thus help them to find and use their own strengths.

Pedagogical love has been considered the core factor in the definition of good teacherhood for decades, though the characteristics of a good teacher have always included a variety of features. Features such as the ability to maintain discipline and order, set a demanding goal level, and the mastery of substance have been especially emphasized (e.g., Davis, 1993; Zombylas, 2007; Hansen, 2009)

Love influences the direction of people’s action as well as its intensity. Positive emotions, joy, strength, and the feeling of being capable lead mental energy toward the desired goal (Rantala & Määttä, 2011). Negative emotions, grief, fear, and anger cause entropy, an inner imbalance that burns off energy, brands the target with negative status, and pursues nullifying and undervaluing (e.g., Isen, 2001).

he educator’s task is to provide pupils with such stimuli and environment where students are guided to limit their instincts by controlling enjoyment and vital-based values, in order to be able to achieve higher values and skills (Solasaari, 2003).

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990, 2000) has launched the concept that refers to an optimal or autotelic experience where people are riveted so comprehensively by a challenging performance that the awareness of time and place blurs. Flow is possible when the challenges in a task are balanced with an actor’s abilities. Flow is an enjoyable state of concentration and task orientation, leading to optimal performance, whether the case is wall creeping, chess playing, dancing, surgery, studying languages, painting, or composing music.

This sets challenges for skill development. If a task is too easy, it will bore. If it is too difficult, it will cause anxiety and fear. The exact experience of flow and the active sense of well-being resulting from the former, encourage people to develop and improve their skills. People are willing to strive for flow whether it was about love for math, art, programming, or orthopedics (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).

In an interview, Gardner (as cited in Goleman, 1999) said flow is intrinsically rewarding without the hope for reward or threat of punishment. We should use learners’ positive moods (love) and through it get them to learn things about fields they can succeed in. People have to discover what they like, what things and doings they love and do these things. Even a child learns the best when he/she loves what he/she is doing and finds it enjoyable. (p. 126)

Pedagogical love might contribute to pupils’ learning and success by providing them with positive learning experiences, initial excitement, and perceived successes. These are the seeds of expertise as a positive feeling that can be considered the source of human strengths (Isen, 2001).

Pedagogical love springs from an individual learner’s presence persuading it to come forward more and more perfectly and diversely. A skillful educator does not just sit by and watch if a learner makes worthless choices or fails in his or her opportunities to grow and develop.

Haavio emphasized the meaning of pedagogical love in teachers’ work and considered that teachers’ work consists of the following two obligations: attachment to learners and dutiful perseverance of life values.

Pedagogical love speaks to interdependence—the recognition and acceptance that we need others.

Love appears in teaching as guidance toward disciplined work, but also as patience, trust, and forgiveness. The purpose is not to make learning fun, easy, or pleasing but to create a setting for learning where pupils can use and develop their own resources eventually proceeding at the maximum of their own abilities

A loving teacher reveals for a pupil the dimensions of his or her development in a manner of speaking. This is how a pupil’s self-esteem strengthens and he or she can develop toward higher activities from the lowest, pleasure-oriented ones. Achieving high-level skills is rewarding because it brings pleasure, and yet, it often demands—as mentioned previously—self-discipline and rejections

A teacher’s work is interpersonal and relational, with a teacher’s own personality fundamental to building relationships with students. A teacher’s work involves plenty of emotional strain. In addition, a teacher inevitably has to experience frustration in his or her work. There are many situations when a teacher will feel like she or he has failed regardless of the solution he or she creates.

Consequently, teachers are likely to experience guilt because they cannot sufficiently attend to all pupils in an appropriate way that is congruent with the notion of caring.

However, teachers have to realize that their own coping, motivation, and engagement require attention; they are not automatic.

Pedagogical love emerges through teachers’ emotions, learned models, moral attitude, and actions

Good teachers are examples to learners even in the most difficult life situations. Teachers have to believe in their work and endeavour to build a nurturing environment and a more humane world.

To be happy about life, to guide students to see the wonder and joy in the mundane is a teacher’s most important skill. Being able to help students find and negotiate the joy, wonder, happiness, and pain in the everydayness of life is an increasingly important quality in today’s insecurities, with the mounting pressure of increased demands for efficiency

The process of uncertainty reduction thus enables individuals to predict another individual's actions, attitudes and behaviors, which can ease anxiety in initial social encounters

Facebook ranks higher than any other form of communication technology, including phone and email, and has become the number one choice of communication for university students

Self-disclosure is the process of revealing personal information about one's self through verbal communication (Sheldon, 2009). Traditional theories of self-disclosure pertain to face-to-face communication encounters, which suggest that self-disclosure allows others to know more about him or herself

emphasized the need for instructors to validate all student perspectives, as well as acknowledge differing beliefs and biases, to create a safe and welcoming community that helps students become “more engaged and feel more interconnected”

who provide a structured and comfortable classroom environment that involves the participation of everyone in the learning activities

thoughtful care for instructors to help students become engaged in their learning and to design virtual classrooms that enhance a sense of community

carefully plan ways for students to interact, students can focus on achieving course learning goals

focus primarily on academic content and not as much on meaningful, interpersonal connections.

such as Facebook, twittering and blogging, might increase the social presence of all of the students as well as the teaching presence of the instructor.

collaborative decision-making related to communication protocols, and required and ongoing student postings in online discussions

instructors need to find ways to help students feel more strongly connected with each other and with the instructor and to facilitate activities that more actively involve students in their own learning.

teachers usually believe that students want to learn and they assume, until proven otherwise, that they can

pretests, survey forms, and a course overview that identified several questions that the course would help them answer.

is better equipped to gather information about students in a variety of ways that may help with success later in the semester.

The distance gap needs to be bridged in both directions. It is not sufficient for teachers to get to know their students without letting them get to know their teachers as well.

(e.g., Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer, 2001). Facilitating interpersonal contact is an important role for online teachers and creating a social presence by projecting their identities is essential

these general behaviors as teacher “presence”

that student deserves to be recognized and treated as an individual