Teaching Online

Technology has been very useful in streamlining teaching at a distance.  There have been many courses over the last few semesters who have really focused on this idea.  Education as a community is really no stranger to teaching at a distance.  Teachers have used the mail, telegraph, telephone, radio and television to teach via correspondence at a distance.  But with the invention of the Internet, educators have really jumped at the opportunity to communicate in real time.  But as the field grows at exponential rates, how do we know what is effective?  What works and what doesn't work?  As a relatively new field, it can be very challenging to measure effectiveness.  Do the traditional techniques we have used at a distance or in a classroom work as effectively online?  It almost seems as though we end up blending some of the techniques. Most old correspondence work involved self-study and exams to measure learning, where face to face instruction incorporated lectures to clarify learning materials.  In an online environment, how many times do we see classes that are either a mixture of these concepts or have gone one way or the other?  Should we be researching new ways to learn through this new medium or are we on the right track blending the methods?  Unfortunately, I do not have that answer and I'm sure it is being researched somewhere as we speak.  For those of us that aspire to someday teach online, here is a resource that you might find useful.  A site dedicated to the improvement of online teaching.  Teaching Online