Some notes on chapter one, Teaching Online:
Quote: The online environment is so different from what most instructors have encountered before.
Question: why ‘virtual classrooms’ ? Your students could communicate without a virtual classroom.
Question: Is the chapter for school teachers, or for all different kind of teachers (working in HRM or companies and businesses.
Is the ‘class ‘ important for online learning? A steady group of participants all working the same speed and same curriculum?
Quote: As an online instructor you need to step back a bit from the spotlight in order to allow the students to take a more active part.
page 16: “instructors who are not based on a campus have even fewer resources to help them troubleshoot problems” . Comment: Campus is so small, mostly my help comes from the internet, forums, websites, people I know sending mail. Being based on a campus is preventing these teachers from using the full power of internet and web, networking does not stop at the gates of campus. Teaching online would be better off with a small group of teachers working together.
Page 21: with online education cross-cultural and international collaborations became possible without expense of travel.
Quote: On the internet nobody knows you are a dog.
I did the beginners questionnaire and my total points is 10. I do like an active part of participants in teaching. (I prefer the word participant above student because of this preference of mine.)
Comments are open.
The dog is Humpo
Questions 
Read Ko and Rossen last year and found the information kind of stiff. My observation of our best online instructors were personable types who were approachable and never quoted theory or “rules.” That said, these instructors had strict office hours and clear lines around their time to be other than “your teacher” and made this work by ALWAYS being available at those times by phone or email. They expected the students (participants) to do the work as best they could and made it clear that it was entirely natural to ask for guidance or disagree. One instructor said she “accompanied” her students through difficulties and success which seems like a good way to describe working online.
My sense of the online environment is there are fewer barriers to human contact, not more like many suggest. A person can reinvent themselves and be more authentic online while participating in the break-down of phony hierarchies and positions of power.
Wonder if online communities are less prone to becoming rigid? Like you, I hardly spend a moment collecting study material or insights on campus. It’s not only that it projects a sense of being a restricted area but it’s designed on an artificial award system that no welcoming community would value. Maybe the saying should be “Online, no one cares you are a dog.”
Bet Humpo cares if you are a sheep though.
I agree that teaching online should be done “in community” with a group of teachers, not necessarily teaching the same class together (but maybe), but collaborating and sharing information, troubles, tactics. This tends to NOT happen in the F2F world.