Online Teaching Skills and Competencies.

This paper sheds light on the skills and competencies required for teaching online courses in higher education. The paper started with an overview of the issues related to online learning and teaching. Reviewing and analyzing literature in this topic were performed to confine skills and competencies that instructors need to effectively teach in online learning environments. These skills and competencies are classified into six categories: (a) pedagogical skills, (b) content skills, (c) design skills, (d) technological skills, (e) management and institutional skills, and (f) social and communication skills. INTRODUCTION Being a university professor is a dream for graduate students who desire to embark on a career in academia. Despite the relatively low average salary (US $74,000 per year) (The United States [US] Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS], 2014), teaching remains one of the most prestigious jobs in the US (Pollack, 2014). Moreover, CareerCast (2014) ranks the tenured university professor career as the second-best job in 2014, as it is more stable and less stressful than most of the other careers on that list. The CareerCast list was created by analyzing data from the BLS and other government agencies based on the environmental, income, outlook, and stress aspects of each career (CareerCast, 2014). According to the BLS (2014), teaching in postsecondary institutions has a low unemployment rate and a projected growth-inemployment rate of 19% from 2012 to 2022. Although the stability of a job makes it less stressful, the nature and responsibilities of teaching may be stressful and could put pressure on those who choose to pursue a career in this field. The landscape of higher education has changed dramatically in the last twenty years (Staley & Trinkle, 2011). The rapid growth in higher education enrollment and employment has been steady. In the fall of 2013, about 1.5 million individuals were responsible for teaching almost 21 million students at more than 7,000 postsecondary institutions in the US (Ginder, Kelly-Reid, & Mann, 2014a, 2014b). This growth is also associated with changes in the intellectual, institutional, and technological aspects of higher education (Scobey, 2012). The characteristics of higher education institutions, employment, and students have altered over the last decade. Today, there is more variety in the tiers and types of programs and degrees offered by different levels and types of institutions (i.e., public, private for profit, private nonprofit, four-year and higher, two-year, and less-thantwo-year) (Ginder et al., 2014b). The number of full-time instructional faculty members is now almost equal to the number of those who teach part-time (Kena et al., 2014), and the typical image of traditional undergraduate students has changed to include those who were previously known as nontraditional. Global, social, political, economic, cultural, technological, and educational factors have spurred these changes (Palloff & Pratt, 2013; Siemens & Matheos, 2010). The ubiquity of information technology and communication has significantly reshaped the structure of learning in higher education. Classroom boundaries have exceeded the realms of time, location, and physical presence (Barber, Donnelly, Rizvi, & Summers, 2013). It is the era of anytime and anywhere learning (Paulson, 2002). New teaching pedagogies, learning skills, and assessment methods have emerged to adapt to these changes (Barber et al., 2013). In addition, new formats of learning have thrived. A large number of courses, certificates, and degrees have been earned through attending open universities, online education, or massive open online courses (MOOCs) (Allen & Seaman, 2014; Siemens & Matheos, 2010). These changes represent challenges that may burden instructional staff in higher education who have to keep pace with the innovative paradigms of higher education, new approaches to research and accreditation, and new methods of teaching and learning (Siemens & Matheos, 2010). This includes being aware of who the students are, what they need to learn, how to teach them, as well as the skills that they, as instructors, need to master in order to effectively execute their role (Palloff & Pratt, 2013; Scobey, 2012). The purpose of this paper is to TOJET: The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology – January 2020, volume 19 issue 1 Copyright © The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology 10 provide an overview of the skills and competencies that can help instructional staff and educators to cope with the contemporary paradigms of learning in higher education. THE TRANSFORMATION OF LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION Much has been written about how the goals and policies of higher education have transformed over the decades. This shift is legitimate. As with any other phenomenon in life, education is impacted by surrounding factors and influences (Siemens & Matheos, 2010). Education outcomes are shifting from focusing solely on cognitive development toward personal, social, and economic development (Eckel & King, 2004; Hanson, 2014; Trapp, 2012). Financial issues, which include the cost of attendance, tuition, and fees, have various themes and patterns (Ginder et al., 2014b). Consequently, the concepts of teaching, learning, and being a teacher or learner have been remodeled (Trapp, 2012). Different models of teaching impact the relationship between the teacher and the learner and describe the teaching and learning processes (Groccia, 2012). However, the following question may arise: What is the most effective model of teaching? Interestingly, in the educational literature, the examination of the effectiveness of a model or method of teaching is always introduced as a comparison with traditional learning or teaching. In a large body of literature, traditional learning has been considered an antonym of new types of learning, such as e-learning, as well as virtual, cyber, hybrid, and online learning (Gaytan & Pasaro, 2009; Moazami, Bahrampour, Azar, Jahedi, & Moattari, 2014; Muniasamy, Ejalani, & Anandhavalli, 2014). Other researchers have used the term traditional learning to draw a conclusion regarding the employment of a specific method of teaching, such as cooperative learning (Basak & Yildiz, 2014; Khan & Ahmad, 2014), problem-based learning (Deo, 2014; Mughal, et al., 2014; Pourshanazari, Roohbakhsh, Khazaei, & Tajadini, 2013; Stefanou, Stolk, Prince, Chen, & Lord, 2013), project-based learning (Bell, 2010; Çibik & Yalçin, 2013; Isik & Gucum, 2013), and game-based learning (Liao, 2011; Ronimus, Kujala, Tolvanen, & Lyytinen, 2014). This leads one to wonder what traditional learning is. There is no consistency in the literature regarding the precise definition of traditional learning (sometimes conventional). McInnerney and Roberts (2004) refer to the idea of the sage on the stage as a common description of traditional learning. In such a model, the instructor is the active party who transfers information to the learners through lectures and printed materials via a kind of interaction between the learners and both the instructor and the content. Lee and Tsai (2011) define traditional learning as “delivering learning material face-to-face with no use of the Internet for teaching and learning” (p. 908). Targamadzė and Petrauskienė (2010) consider traditional learning as “a process of learning that takes place under the supervision of a teacher in a physical learning environment when using physical tools of learning and direct synchronous communication” (p. 171). Allen and Seaman (2014) label as traditional only those courses that lack any online technology. These definitions imply that traditional learning is a process of learning, a method of teaching, and a medium of delivering instruction. The instructor and learner synchronously interact and communicate, as they are physically and simultaneously present in the same room without the facilitation of the Internet and online technology. However, the actual situation surrounding higher education classes differs from this image. The latest report by the Babson Survey Research Group states that only a very small number of institutions in the US have no online offerings (Allen & Seaman, 2014). Moreover, almost all public institutions fall outside of this small number (Allen & Seaman, 2014). Students come to the classroom holding in their hands their own devices that are connected to the Internet through cellular data plans or the Wi-Fi offered by the institution (Palloff & Pratt, 2013; Parker, Lenhart, & Moore, 2011). E-books, wikis, YouTube videos, and social media are available as learning and teaching materials and resources (Fulton, 2012; Ravid, Kalman, & Rafaeli, 2008; Reuben, 2008; Siemens & Matheos, 2010). Instructors use learning management systems (LMSs) to upload the syllabus and as a testing and grading portal (Georgouli, Skalkidis, & Guerreiro, 2008; Palloff & Pratt, 2013). Both the instructor and the students need to have access to the Internet in what is known as the traditional classroom. In addition to traditional courses, Allen and Seaman (2014) provide a classification for courses according to how Internet technology contributes to their delivery. Web-facilitated courses are face-to-face courses that use the Internet to deliver less than 30% of the content by posting the learning materials and assignments to an LMS. When less than 80% of the course content and activities are presented through the Internet, the course is called hybrid or blended. Online courses are completely delivered and taught online.