B. Assigning Tasks and Providing Support

If you consider teaching, all teaching, in a holistic sense, these categories of delivering content & sharing expertise, giving feedback, providing support and assigning tasks are artificial. However, they prove to be useful when we attempt to map the various roles we have and the activities we do as instructors to support those roles to the online spaces and digital tools we have available to us. Irrespective of these seemingly artificial categories, and of whether the course is in-person or online, a course has a beginning, a middle and an end. We can map what we do in terms of providing support and assigning tasks to what our students’ needs are at a particular stage in our course. This section is organized based on the learner chain of activity as way to integrate activities providing support and assigning tasks.

We can support learners in their journey through our courses at each link in this chain and our efforts in doing so as online facilitators align with principles of good teaching practice. These methods help to create, and maintain, a supportive learning environment.