How to be a Great Online Teacher

Online teaching is a relatively new but rapidly growing field that requires a new set of teaching skills. How to be a Great Online Teacher is designed to supplement and extend training that is already being offered. Positive, warm, proactive instructor communication is crucial in creating an environment where participants feel valued and safe in developing themselves as online learners. The qualities that describe good teachers: caring, supportive, structured etc. are all especially important in the online world. How those attributes are communicated online is the difference.

Since instructor communication skills are crucial to the success of a course or program it would follow that these skills are purposefully taught and instructors supported as they develop these skills. Unfortunately, most instructor training programs feature the tools of online learning, not the teaching and communication skills. The developers of these tool-based training programs probably assume, albeit wrongly, that communication and teaching skills can be transferred directly and easily from the face-to-face environment to the online environment. This is not always the case. While there are similarities in teaching within both of these environments there are marked differences as well.

Lehmann deals just with the knowledge base and communication skills necessary to be a high-quality online teacher. Based on her actual teaching experiences as a highly successful online instructor, Lehmann includes examples of real student/instructor communications as well as tips for working efficiently. How to be a Great Online Teacher is highly readable and organized so that the reader can refer to specific sections as future needs arise.

This book is for anyone teaching online courses. It could also be used as a textbook or supplemental reading for online instructor training programs.

Dr. Kay Johnson Lehmann is an independent educational consultant specializing in online education and the integration of technology into the K-12 curriulum. She won the Milken National Educator Award and the Washington Award for Excellence in Education for her abilities to reach every student in the classroom. Her innovative methods utilized hands-on constructivist teaching with technology integration to bring social studies, reading and other subjects alive for her middle school students. Garrison Middle School, Walla Walla, WA, with a free-reduced lunch rate of 50% and a large second-language learner population, provided plenty of opportunities to utilize the methods shared in this book.

Summers spent working with teachers in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Teacher Leadership Project along with a Master's degree in Education with a specialty in Online Teaching and Learning led to working full-time in teacher professional development. Her online courses and face-to-face workshops feature the same constructivist, technology-enhanced methods that were so successful in the classroom.

Lehmann is the author of Surviving Inclusion (ScarecrowEducation, 2003). In addition, she has previously authored two articles as a contributor to the Microsoft Virtual Classroom Teacher Network.