High School Teachers' Course Designs and Their Professional Knowledge of Online Teaching

This paper deals with the process of expanding the virtual secondary education school network, aiming to provide daily basis, online teaching. The context of this research is the ESR funded Eastern Finland Educational Network Project, which is a network of 36 high schools providing courses via web-based learning environments. The project is a shared activity between teachers and researchers. The aim of the present study is to investigate teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge by finding out what kind of pedagogical solutions the teachers use while designing and carrying out online teaching. In this study thirteen online courses were analysed and based on the analysis, four different course design patterns were found. The most general approach in course designs seems to be teacher centred, focusing on well guided individual learning processes. There seems to be need for development of teacher technological pedagogical content knowledge, to support approaches of more collaborative course designs.