Charting the role of the online teacher in higher education: winds of change

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of the online teacher at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. In this paper, it is intended to identify the issues and dilemmas facing those who are navigating the online teaching environment, to elaborate on the issues/dilemmas, and to offer some ways of addressing these issues by referring to the responses of experienced practitioners, online students, to the literature and to data collected for an Australian Government-funded educational evaluation project. Much of the data presented in this paper relates to an online course, Designing Instruction for Flexible Learning, which is part of the totally online initiative, launched at USQ in 1997. The authors of this paper have been involved in both teaching and instructional design of online courses for several years and have identified a significant shift in the role of the online teacher.