Seven Principles of Effective Teaching and Online Learning

Eugenia Conway, Assistant Director of The Teaching Academy at New Mexico State University notes that “Many instructors of traditional courses who rightly believe that learning is a social process consider ‘same-time same-place’ interaction central to a successful educational experience’” (American Federation of Teachers quoted in Conway, 2003). They dispute whether students can get an equivalent education online. Therefore, one way to ensure that quality remains in online learning is to review Chickering & Gamson’s principles, which were based on 50 years of research and have been considered the standard for best practices for over 25 years. Her paper relates the Seven Principles to online learning: Teaching Strategies for Distance Education: Implementing the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Online Education. Not only does the paper provide specific ways that technology can enhance teaching and learning, but it also contains a discussion about “opposing paradigms”—teacher-centered (traditional, positivism) vs. student-centered (constructivism) classrooms and provides specifics for developing rubrics and electronic portfolios.

I also came across the following resource which provides a, "A Framework for the Pedagogical Evaluation of eLearning Environments". The paper uses Chickering & Gamson's (1987) 'Seven Principles of Effective Teaching' as the framework for examining the potential of Virtual Learning Environments to enhance learning. It also includes a questionnaire based on the viable system and conversational models articulated by Britain and Liber (2004). The document is made available from Eduforge, "an open access collaborative learning and exploratory environment designed for the sharing of ideas, research outcomes, open source educational software, and tools within a community of educators, researchers and developers."