Promoting the Good e-Teacher: Didactical Choices when developing e-pedagogical Competences

Abstract

The article gives an overview of how the development of a blended e-pedagogy course for Higher Education teachers have used the experiences from many years of international online courses for European BA students. Influenced by the situated-learning perspective, this course employs student-centred teaching and learning methods. Moreover, inspired by the Community of Inquiry, this programme emphasizes the importance of Cognitive, Teaching and Social presence in the Virtual Learning Environment. The students plan their own courses in accordance with the stages of becoming an e-learner. One uses the ecological “Model of Relations between Didactical Categories” as a framework, and the e-pedagogy course is customized to be “hands-on” learning experiences, which promotes the desired e-teacher competences. During the course the students are engaged in discussions and co-operation by using different ICT-collaborations tools. At this time, the course has been held twice, and is available for everyone as an online learning resource under the Creative Commons license (http://www.virclass.net/eped). Evaluations by students have demonstrated that this hands-on training course can help students attain the necessary competences needed to be skilled e-teachers.