LITERATURE REVIEW
Although technology, especially the Internet, is revolutionizing the way people learn, there is very little literature on the topic of effective teaching online. Recent studies such as the one by Thiele (2003) focused on the learning patterns of online students. The particular focus of Thiele's study was on the effect of online courses on learning styles. Kenner, Androwich, and Edwards (2003) concurred that distance education has grown over recent years. These authors in writing about a particular program offered by Excelsior College to prepare nurse executives again focus on elements of online education such as program cost and factors that attract students to this mode of learning. Christener (2003) cautions that online education should not be seen as the cure for higher education's ills or as the ultimate in educational technology. He observes that problems exist in this new format: balancing the needs of students and faculty can be challenging and not all subjects work as online courses.
White, Roberts and Br Anna n (2003) focused particularly on course design in online education. Their major premise is that “unless the course is reconceptualized using an interactive learning pedagogy, the results are nothing more than a correspondence course via e-mail and that simply transferring a traditional classroom-based course to an online format is doomed to failure” However, the unanswered question beyond course design is how does the instructor influence the learning experienced by the student. White, Roberts and Br Ana n go on to describe an online nurse refresher course provided by University of Wisconsin that promotes the following four components - humanizing or creating a good learning environment; getting the learners to participate; using the right message so that it is received, understood, and remembered; and eliciting feedback from the learner (White, Roberts & Br Ana n, 2003, p. 173). These elements may provide some clues as to what makes online educators exemplary yet a major gap remains in our understanding of effective online teaching.
Narrative inquiry was the method used in this study. For centuries people have told stories to convey values and explore life (Taylor, 1996). Carter (1993) argues that stories as a mode of knowing are “particularly suited to explicating the issues” that are relevant to educators (p. 6). As Carter explained stories capture and richness and nuances of meaning in human affairs. We believe that the effective teacher-learner relationship is probably rooted, at least in part, in the human interaction between the participants in this relationship. In designing this study we were influenced by Elbaz (1991) who wrote, “story is the very stuff of teaching, the landscape within which we live as teachers and researchers and within which the work of teachers can be seen as making sense” (p. 3). This we began to understand exemplary online education using narrative inquiry.
This initial study involved questioning graduates of the Masters in Health Study (MHS), Masters in Nursing (MN) and the Advanced Nurse Practitioner (ANP) programs from AthabascaUniversity. These learners had all completed their degree requirements entirely online. Specifically the goal was to ask their perspectives about what makes an online educator exemplary.
Participants were asked the following question on a survey that was sent to all MHS, MN and ANP graduates one month after convocation for the years 2002 and 2003. They were asked to provide a narrative that is to focus on specific interactions and experiences with their exemplary teachers rather than on a list of characteristics or adjectives in the following question:
|
Loren ipsum dolor sit 
