What title do you give the person with the grade book in an online classroom?
What you call this person will greatly reflect you philosophy of education. These possible titles have a heavy cultural burden.
| Possible Titles | Stereotypical Implications | Online Usage Issues |
| Teacher | Someone with superior knowledge or morals who enlightens the innocent. Typically used of the instructor of children. | Using this term would make the person doing the grading also responsible for providing the content. Also the teacher is generally the focal point of a classroom. In the online classroom (and any classroom in my opinion) the focus should be on the learners' problems or tasks, and on the learners themselves. |
| Instructor | Someone who tells you how to do something. | In the online classroom the learner is pointed to instruction. Instruction comes from many sources. The learners learn primarily by interacting with many and varied sources, and with each other. So all the learners are also instructors. |
| Tutor | 1. Someone you hire to help you when you are having difficulty
with a subject.
2. A "drill sergeant" who keeps making you do it until you get it right. 3. Something or someone who drills you on rote memory work. |
1. This terms is for a one-on-one situation Here we
have a classroom full of learners helping each other learn.
2. Maybe good for psycho-motor skills such as marching. The one thing that is difficult to do in an online classroom is to help people enhance these kinds of skills. 3. If rote memory is really necessary let's let a machine do that. If instruction is aimed at the levels 3-6 of cognitive domain, or is aimed at the affective domain then rote drilling is of little use. |
| Facilitator | Someone who helps make things happen. Often viewed as a servant. | The servant attitude is great and it fits with a lot of new management theory. |
| Course Manager | The one who makes sure you do what you are supposed to so you both look good to the boss. | This is only part of the function. The term emphases the more "mechanical" parts of the role. |
| Professor | A person who knows "everything" about a particular subject area. When he speaks everyone else is to shut up. | Using this term would make many people fear to share their ideas and insights in class. It also makes this person the focus of the classroom instead of the learners and their issues being the focus. |
| Coach | A person who tells you how to do things that they might not be able to do. Maybe they could in the past. How many overweight coaches have you seen on TV? | This may be ok some of the time, but hopefully they can
model what it is you want to learn to do, or how you want to be able to
think. Again there is the superior/subordinate relationship here that is probably not healthy in an online classroom. |
| Moderator | Someone who keeps things from getting out of hand and keep the group on task. | This covers most of the function, however it does not necessarily imply the personal attention that an online learner should receive. |
| Subject Matter Expert (SME) | A relatively new term. | Similar issues as with the title "Professor." |
| Leader | A model person who goes in front to show the way. | Well, there is some of this in the role we are considering. The problem is the focus on the leader and not the learners. Using it might cause the learners to look at the leader too much and not look at each other enough. |
| Mentor | A personal helper who tells you what to do and then holds you accountable. Normally used in one-on-one situations. | Probably a good term for individualized instruction. However the environment here is a classroom. |
| Guide | Someone who has been this way before and helps you enjoy the trip. | This is not bad. A few years ago there was a long discussion
in DEOS-L
contrasting "the sage on a stage" and "a guide by my
side." The problem with this term is that it puts too much responsibility on the guide. Adult learners want to be responsible for their own learning. |
| Trainer | Typically used of physical skill. Is generally used in a one-on-one situation. | Focus on the learner's problems and task is good. However, it misses the concept of the learners helping each other. |
| Grader | Typically a person who just grades papers with little or no directly communication with the learner. Often done by an upperclassman trying to earn money and break into the teaching field. Most learners despise graders since they don't have direct contact with them. Many learners think graders are used by lazy professors. | I hope the person we are talking about does a lot more then that! |
The information explosion today is so great that no one should ever claim to have all knowledge in even a very narrow field on inquiry.
