Online Manifesto

Manifesto for teaching online - Written by teachers and researchers in online education. University of Edinburgh MSc in E-learning 2011

• Distance is a positive principle, not a deficit. Online can be the privileged mode.
• The possibility of the 'online version' is overstated. The best online courses are born digital.
• By redefining connection we find we can make eye contact online.
• 'Best practice' is a totalising term blind to context, there are many ways to get it right.
• Every course design is philosophy and belief in action.
• The aesthetics of online course design are too readily neglected: courses that are fair of (inter)face are better places to teach and learn in.
• Online courses are prone to cultures of surveillance: our visibility to each other is a pedagogical and ethical issue.
• Text is being toppled as the only mode that matters in academic writing.
• Visual and hypertextual representations allow arguments to emerge, rather than be stated.
• New forms of writing make assessors work harder: they remind us that assessment is an act of interpretation.
• Feedback can be digested, worked with, created from. In the absence of this, it is just a response.
• Assessment strategies can be designed to allow for the possibility of resistance.
• A routine of plagiarism detection structures-in a relation of distrust.
• Assessment is a creative crisis as much as it is a statement of knowledge.
• Place is differently, not less, important online.
• Closed online spaces limit the educational power of the network.
• Online spaces can be permeable and flexible, letting networks and flows replace boundaries.
• Course processes are held in a tension between randomness and intentionality.
• Online teaching should not be downgraded into facilitation.
• Community and contact drive good online learning.