Arenas of Teacher Support in an Online Education Programme from Academic and Administrative Perspectives

What makes open and distance online education unique is its accomplishment by multiple actors who perform pedagogical, technological, administrative, and financial roles and support. With such a nature and with the increasingly prevalent use of new media in online education, it broadens the arena for the participation of a diverse teaching workforce. In addition to the traditional teachers, there are other professionals who are qualified to teach, such as previously engaged retirees, practitioners, and people with disabilities, requiring unique academic and administrative assistance to navigate technology. This autoethnographic study surfaced the nature of support for teachers in a multidisciplinary graduate programme developed by five open universities in the ASEAN region and delivered online. The study aimed to answer the following research questions: What nature of support do teachers require? How is the support performed from academic, technological and administrative perspectives? Qualitative data in the form of email exchanges and programme reports of the authors were collected and analysed thematically. The analysis surfaced three arenas where support is required: 1) Transitioning from being a traditional teacher to being an online teacher (consisting of acquiring the Open and Distance eLearning (ODeL) Framework as a shared performance and awareness of the technological nature of online education); 2) Teaching interaction between teacher and students (consisting of constructing the online classroom and connecting with the students); and 3) Transforming the societal role of the university (consisting of programme completion of students and producing competent workforce).