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Templates are fine, but they’re based on practiced routines rather than solving problems.  This is OK when getting started, but practiced routines can be constricting because the focus is on conforming to the routine rather than solving the problem.

Ideally, the course is less about the information and more about how the learner uses the information

While acknowledging the importance of Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy, Fink (2003) suggests a new taxonomy that goes beyond Bloom’s cognitive hierarchical learning levels.  The categories of Fink’s learning taxonomy are “relational and interactive” rather than mandated successive levels and address the following categories of learning: foundational knowledge, application, integration, human dimension, caring, and learning how to learn (Fink, 2003, p. 32). Constituent categories are interrelated as “achieving any one kind of learning simultaneously enhances the possibility of achieving the other kinds of learning as well” (Fink, 2003, p. 32).  In contrast to Bloom (1956), Fink (2003) moves instruction from teacher-centered to learning-centered

A teacher/instructor/professor obviously plays numerous roles in a traditional classroom: role model, encourager, supporter, guide, synthesizer

This model works well when we can centralize both the content (curriculum) and the teacher. The model falls apart when we distribute content and extend the activities of the teacher to include multiple educator inputs and peer-driven learning. Simply: social and technological networks subvert the classroom-based role of the teacher.

Networks thin classroom walls. Experts are no longer “out there” or “over there”.

Many other programs drill the technology and have faculty fit their pedagogy to it, as opposed to the other way around.

Such professional development for effective online teaching should be faculty-led.

The misconceptions about the validity of online teaching are only encouraged by using the word “training”. It implies a false proposition: that instructors need to learn the tools first, and that once they have done so they will develop good online classes. Neither of these is true. Instead, instructors should be encouraged to examine their pedagogy as they begin to teach online, and be provided with extensive technical support as they develop courses based on their chosen pedagogy.