Handbook of Online Learning: Innovations in Higher Education and Corporate Training

Technology-mediated instruction has taken the university and the corporate sector by storm. As more instructors teach online for a dispersed learning community in both academic and business environments, there′s a need for resources that will help them adapt to this new teaching method.

Educators who come out of traditional academic institutions tend to use traditional methods when offering courses online (e.g. lectures, textbooks and readings, examinations) rather than attend to small-group processes and principles of what the editors of this volume call "andragogy." This Handbook goes beyond the mechanics of how to create and direct an online learning experience to consider such a new approach to pedagogy in doing so. The editors primary purpose is to clarify the conceptual issues that underlie effective online teaching and to offer practical guidance to educators and corporate trainers who plan to teach in a virtual environment. Their central tenet is: the adoption of computer networks as the teaching vehicle of the future demands a re-examination of our core beliefs about pedagogy and how students learn.

The transfer of a classroom curriculum into cyberspace is deceptively simple, but doing so without an appreciation of the nuances and implications of learning online ignores not only the potential of this medium but the inevitable realities of entering it. Rather than fear the challenges that new technology brings to systems of learning, the editors hope to help instructors embrace it by re-thinking how knowledge is acquired and how educational processes may be optimally designed in a new age of teaching and learning.

Features/Benefits

- Part I provides an overview and includes discussion of the unique structural aspects of the electronic learning environment, pedagogical issues, curriculum design, psychological and group dynamics, and ethical issues.

- Part II examines practical issues associated with implementing courses online, both in the traditional university setting and in professionalrporate training environments.

- The book draws heavily on personal case examples, many from The Fielding Graduate Institute′s 26+ years of teaching in nontraditional distributed learning environments.

Kjell Erik Rudestam is Professor of Psychology at Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara, California, where he served as Associate Dean of Academic Affairs for many years. He was previously a psychology professor at York University, Toronto, and Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, after receiving his PhD in Psychology (Clinical) from the University of Oregon. He is the author of Your Statistical Consultant: Answers to Your Data Analysis Questions, 2nd edition (also with Rae R. Newton), Handbook of Online Learning, 2nd edition (with Judith Schoenholtz-Read), and eight other books, as well as numerous articles in professional journals on topics including suicide, psychotherapy, and family and organizational systems. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (Division 12), a Diplomate of the American Board of Examiners in Professional
Psychology (Clinical), a Diplomate of the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress, and holds an Honorary Doctorate of Science from The Professional School of Psychology.

Judith Schoenholtz-Read, Ed.D., is a member of the Psychology Program at The Fielding Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, California. In 1999, she coauthored "Group Supervision Meets Technology: A Model for Computer Mediated Group Training at a Distance" (with Dean Janoff) for the International Journal of Group Psychotherapy. She is a fellow in the Canadian Group Psychotherapy Association and is Secretary of Division 49 (Group Psychology and Psychotherapy) of the American Psychological Association. Her research interests include feminist theory and practice, group psychotherapy, non-verbal methods of psychotherapy, psychotherapy integration, and narrative research methods.