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Mentoring Experiences of New Online Teachers: Voices of Graduate and Early Career Instructors

By Heather Garcia and Mary Ellen Dello Stritto

Working in a centralized online learning unit at Oregon State University’s Ecampus, we partner with instructors from many different disciplines. In our roles supporting both the scholarship of online teaching and learning as well as high quality online course design, we are driven, in large part, by a motivation to reach students who would otherwise not have access to higher education. We believe that online learning opens doors for many students, and quality online learning experiences require that we better support and equip faculty to effectively teach online courses. 

Heather wrote a class paper based on these motivations, which evolved into a full research analysis which continued over the next year. In addition to working together on the analysis, literature review, and writing, we also engaged in discussions with four other researchers and instructional designers. This team worked  on different analyses that originated from the larger study of the experiences of online instructors. Regular meetings with this team provided a crucial support system that shaped our analyses in substantial ways. 

Our approach to this work was guided by our feminist perspectives and values. These are reflected in our work in multiple ways, including the collaborative process of working with each other and the larger research team. This guided our decision to take a qualitative approach and center the voices and lived experiences of our research participants. 

Read the TLI article here.

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