27.5: Online Pedagogy - Best Practice and Theories

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“I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught”. – Winston Churchill

Online pedagogical best practices are currently the focus of much research, as the educational and corporate sectors adopt some form of e-learning, either fully online or hybrid. To date, and as a general basis in the design and delivery of online learning, many educators and trainers have made reference to the previous learning practice and works of Bloom, Chickering, and Gagne.

Table\(\PageIndex{1}\): Bloom’s original taxonomy (1956), revised by Anderson (2001)
Bloom’s Original Taxonomy	Anderson’s Revised Taxonomy
Knowledge	Remembering
Comprehension	Understanding
Application	Applying
Analysis	Analyzing
Synthesis	Evaluating
Evaluation	Creating

Many instructional designers refer to Gagne’s (1992) categorization of learning into intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, verbal information, motor skills, and attitudes, and to his nine steps in e-learning:

gaining attention
stating the objective
stimulating recall of prior learning
presenting the stimulus
providing learning guidance
eliciting performance
providing feedback
assessing performance
enhancing retention and transfer to other contexts

Chickering’s (1987) seven principles can be the basis of all forms of online learning. Good practice in undergraduate education:

encourages contact between students and faculty;
develops reciprocity and cooperation among students;
encourages active learning;
gives prompt feedback;
emphasizes time on task;
communicates high expectations; and
respects diverse talents and ways of learning.

“New technologies can communicate high expectations explicitly and efficiently. Significant real-life problems, conflicting perspectives, or paradoxical data sets can set powerful learning challenges that drive students to not only acquire information, but sharpen their cognitive skills of analysis, synthesis, application, and evaluation”. (Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996)