Teaching in online environments increases the workload and responsibilities for many educators as new conceptual views and technical skills are required. Isolation and depersonalization impacts educators as well as learners, creating concerns about burnout in online faculty79. Most academic considerations of engagement focus on learners and ignore the needs of faculty. Opportunities also exist for organizations to utilize social software to also improve the faculty sense of connectedness to peers.
IRIS Model of Moving From Innovation to Systematization
The process of innovating differs from the process of systematizing learning innovations (see Image 9). Innovation is concerned with exploring “what is possible” and pushing the boundaries of existing practices and views of teaching and learning. To determine the impact and suitability of innovations in various educational contexts, a cycle of research and implementation must be employed. During these stages, educators are focusing on answering questions like “how does it work?” and “what is the real world impact?”. Insight gleaned from research and implementation then leads to the formulation of a systemic approach to duplicating teaching and learning. Confusion often results in organizations when an innovator expresses “what is possible” and is met with an organizational response of “we can’t duplicate that”. Innovations expand what is possible, but in most cases, before broad implementation, additional research and contextual analysis is required.