Welcome to Online Teaching Strategies.

This Web site is intended to offer educators an introduction to effectively using the richness of the World Wide Web as part of their everyday teaching strategy repertoire. As such, this site is meant to be an idea site. It is hoped that users will be inspired to further develop knowledge and skills and improve teaching practice so as to better prepare students to face the challenges of life in the 21st century.

The challenges facing the students of today are radically different than those faced by previous generations due to tremendous changes in society. Technology, particularly the World Wide Web, has played a key role in these societal changes. Given that most of today's teachers are what Marc Prensky calls "digital immigrants," who speak "digital as a second language" to students who are "digital natives", we must acknowledge that we have much to learn if we have any hope of providing a relevant education to today's students. Fortunately, the very technology that has transformed our world can be used to transform our teaching. Technology can "re-place" the teacher—that is, technology can "re-position" the teacher at the side of the student. In this position, teachers and students become partners, co-learners. Online learning is not about using technology, it is about thinking a new way about teaching.

It is clearly no longer enough to merely transmit information (course content) to our students and test them on their recall. Now more than ever, we must foster in our students the ability to think critically and creatively; to problem solve; to effectively seek, evaluate, understand and utilize information; and to work well both independently and collaboratively. To accomplish this, our students' learning experiences must be active, constructive and complex. One key means of accomplishing these goals, of reaching and teaching the digital natives, is to teach online.

Teaching online, either in face-to-face classrooms or at a distance, offers teachers the opportunity to more easily capture the interest of their digital students, to enhance collaboration, to individualize the learning experience, to increase active learning, to decrease the "tyranny of the timetable," to offer "just-in-time" learning as opposed to "just-in-case" learning, to foster independent learning, and to facilitate deeper thinking and meaningful learning. Fortunately, as technologies become more user-friendly and more readily available, it is not an overwhelming task for any educator to become a digital teacher—a teacher dedicated to meaningful learning using technology.