The importance of the teacher-student relationship in distance education: rights and duties

The rapid development of distance learning models connected to the development of internet technology has brought many facilities for the teacher-student relationship in distance education.

There are three topics that must be taken into account for a distance study:

  • teachers’ role;
  • education objectives;
  • student learning.

Distance Education is a new global technology-based education to facilitate immediate and easy learning and the interaction of communicators, teachers and students in educational programs.

EAD can provide creativity and innovation in mass education for all. This leads people to learn individually and shifts the responsibility for learning from instructors to students.

In addition to facilitating the selection of students of courses and content to reflect their needs and motivations. The modality also provides creative and qualified ideas and information to motivate students from different backgrounds. To be effective, distance education programs need to redefine the roles of teachers and students in the teaching-learning process.

In this post we will talk about the importance of the teacher-student relationship in distance learning in acquiring knowledge and improving aptitude in distance learning.

What will you read in this article?

  • Distance learning
    • EAD advantage
    • Disadvantage of EAD
  • The role of the distance learning teacher
    • Other roles of the teacher:
  • Distance learning students learning
    • Other student learning:
  • Teacher-student relationship in distance learning

Distance learning

Distance learning is a new trend in education. One of the reasons that accelerated this trend was the internet. From reading news, sending e-mails, entertainment, even education, the internet with its digital multimedia technologies offers a new paradise for the exchange of information.

Among these impacts, distance learning is a very important and interesting one. One of the attractions of distance learning is its flexibility of instruction. Students and instructors can be spatially and temporally separated from each other, that is, students are in a remote area.

Distance learning is generally used in industry, schools and academia to reduce costs and reach as large an audience of geographically distant students as possible.

This allows students who are physically unable to go to an educational institution to learn and progress in their own time.

EAD advantage

The advantage of distance learning is that the student’s tendency to communicate more frequently with teachers and classmates, from person to person or via e-mail systems, is greater.

We can also highlight other advantages:

  • communication can be done at any time of the day or night, when doubts arise during the study or when you have a problem with a task;
  • less embarrassment lies in asking questions in class;
  • the contact is made without fear of disturbing the teacher, because the communication will be seen only when he can see it.

An additional advantage for the teacher-student relationship in EAD is that web courses teach students the educational value of the internet. This is important because the internet will presumably be a great asset during your lifelong learning or in continuing education after leaving university.

Not only is ‘www’ an easy, effective and fast method of continuing education, which has traditionally been filled with short courses, extension courses and extended conferences, but it can also be more current and timely.

– Read more EAD benefits : why you need distance learning.

Disadvantage of EAD

A current disadvantage is that not all data that is available on the web is suitable for some courses.

Students may not have acquired sufficient knowledge of a specific field needed to use data sets. Although these data sets are suitable for many advanced undergraduate courses.

Too often, data requires professional judgments to be made or to go through the knowledge of an expert.

Desirable attributes when experts use data can become a disadvantage, however, when beginners are exposed to them.

Perhaps, more appropriate data sets appear to fill these gaps as more educators recognize the needs in their area of ​​expertise.

A disadvantage that can be found when using WEB fonts, anyway for education, is that addresses can change frequently.

Presumably, well-established institutions will be less likely to be included in this complaint. However, currently some fall into this category.

Often computers will be updated, new network locations established or administrations changed without new addresses being updated.

The role of the distance learning teacher

Some teachers who fear distance learning, however, claim that distance learning technologies change the role of the teacher. A liberator of corporate values ​​and objectives, rather than a liberator of humanistic objectives.

With imagined and real collaboration between corporations and academia through distance learning initiatives, faculty members fear that they will be forced to reshape themselves as corporate coaches.

Those who share this fear link distance learning to online universities whose goals are profitable, controlled by large companies and not by a progressive view of education.

The role of the teacher in the age of technology in education is not a new issue in the field of rhetoric and composition.

In fact, for more than a decade, computers and composition experts have claimed that one of the benefits of using computers in the writing classroom is that the teacher is decentralized, inviting students to become co-builders of classroom knowledge. class.

Other roles of the teacher:

  • The teacher promotes student autonomy and is aware of individual differences.
  • The teacher uses relevant and current information to impart knowledge. Constantly researches the curriculum and provides concrete and up-to-date examples.
  • The teacher gives importance to students’ thoughts and promotes student research, evaluation, discussion and feedback.
  • The teacher is aware of individual differences in students when designing course materials.
  • The teacher knows the student’s previous skills and knowledge and uses this basis to build new knowledge. In addition, the teacher knows how the student can learn.
  • The teacher initiates the teacher-student relationship at EAD and has technological and communication skills to effectively implement distance education.
  • The teacher builds student-centered learning with opportunities for interaction. Students are responsible for learning and are responsible for contacting the teacher when necessary.
  • The teacher collaborates with the student in self-development and responsibility.
  • The teacher provides an environment, materials and guidance for collaborative learning, interactive discussion groups, individual learning and research.
  • The teacher provides students with quick and accurate feedback to facilitate learning.

Distance learning students learning

How is student learning altered, improved or impaired by distance learning?

This issue encompasses two other key areas discussed here because teachers’ perceptions of their roles and schools’ statements about academic goals influence students’ experience in courses.

At the heart of a teacher’s role is a desire to affect certain types of learning outcomes for students. This key issue is, like the others, often presented as a bilateral debate.

On the one hand are those who argue that because distance gives access to some students who could not go to the “real” college or university, it benefits students and promotes lifelong learning.

Scholars also suggest that an online course experience can be as rich and rewarding as a traditional course experience. On the other side, there are those who identify the difficulties that students have with online courses.

Other student learning:

  • Students use appropriate technology to collaboratively interact with each other and with the teacher, and use feedback and consultation to develop and improve knowledge, skills and attitudes.
  • Students are responsible for their own learning. They must decide what they want to learn, establish their goal, research and develop their subject.
  • Students search for current data to answer questions and solve problems.
  • Students learn to solve problems through assessment, data collection and the development and implementation of strategies using relevant information.
  • Students identify communication barriers, their causes and solutions.
  • Students promote lifelong learning and know how to access and use information when instruction is completed.

Teacher-student relationship in distance learning

In a remote environment, the student’s ability and willingness to self-monitor and accurately assess the understanding of the content and ask for help accordingly, can represent a crucial variable that affects both learning and  teaching processes.

In ODL, teachers do not have direct access to verbal and non-verbal resources or feedback from their students.

This feedback allows the teacher, in a conventional learning environment, to receive verbal and non-verbal signals to adjust the instruction process in real time in order to meet the needs of his students.

For example, attentive teachers often rearrange and repeat content in response to students’ confused expressions and unusual behavior.

However, distance learning instructors, as opposed to those in a conventional learning environment, are unable to monitor, decode and use feedback to modify online instruction.

In a synchronous distance learning environment, the instructor often  stops teaching in order to ask students if they have understood the content presented.

The use of communication techniques by students is very important in distance learning. Many of the students have already created, on their own initiative, and use online forums, mailing lists and bulletin boards.

Of course, the most important means of communication between students and teachers is e-mail. Most students can read e-mails, even if they don’t have a computer at home.

The quality of the teacher-student relationship in distance education and the interaction in distance education has increased with the advances in communication technologies, especially the internet.

Student data related to teacher interaction data allows you to identify specific types of interactions. These data correlate with students’ positive results.

The grouping of student-related data with teacher-related data represents an integrative approach that helps to clarify the complex interrelationships between people, processes and variable products in a virtual distance learning environment .

Online data collection helps to solve the cognitive problem and affective difficulties and formulate operational guidelines to prevent these difficulties in future learning projects

by Abdullah Sam
I’m a teacher, researcher and writer. I write about study subjects to improve the learning of college and university students. I write top Quality study notes Mostly, Tech, Games, Education, And Solutions/Tips and Tricks. I am a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence or virtue.

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