What Role do Lectures Play in Online Courses?

In an online course, lectures alone should not be the norm for a multitude of reasons. When we think about our audience of learners, we have to think about how they learn best, not how we would like to teach. Since I work at the elementary level, most classrooms have moved away from lectures even in face to face courses. Students need to be engaged in the learning as much as possible. So if there are lectures, they should be short and interactive in order for students to be able to pay attention for the amount of time and to be able to apply what they have learned. According to McKeachie and Svinicki (2006) as cited in Teaching in a Digital Age by Bates (2015), they believe that lecturing is best used for summarizing material found in a variety of sources, adapting materials based on the audience, as an introduction to new ideas, or to model expert thinking. Another point to bring up is that if students can access the learning themselves, they should be. Vital pieces of information are lost when transferred to a lecture, which could also contain bias. One of the benefits of being in an online course is also to be able to access the learning when it is convenient. I have enjoyed in our courses at Lamar how that we can watch the lecture around our own schedule since all of us work full time and most of us have families, it allows me to learn when it is the best environment at home for me to learn.
In regards to learning by apprenticeship, I think it is a great model and reminds me of my student teaching. Even though there are some downfalls, as mentioned by Bates (2015), overall it at least gives the learner a real context for all of their learning from theory. I don't know that this could be done well in an online environment at least in a trades field. My course does have the learners doing the work on their own campuses, but it doesn't require any machinery or any materials. I think that would be harder to replicate and really feel comfortable in their ability to do the work. It's like if a doctor got their degree without every actually being trained in person or going through clinicals and skills labs. I wouldn't trust that doctor to have the deep learning that the other doctors who studied in person would have.
The experiential learning in my course will be instructional coaches taking teachers through the Impact Cycle, which is a specific structure to grow teachers in something that they care about. It will be a self paced course set up in modules based on distinct parts of the cycle. The assignments will be to submit a video of them coaching or a video of reflection about that portion of the coaching cycle. They will then give and get feedback from their peers. The course will include a reflection portion for each module so that they can remember what they want to do differently in their next Impact Cycle so it gets better and better every time. These instructional coaches will also have mentor coaches to reach out to along the way with questions and to problem solve with, including me as a resource.

References:
Bates, A.W. (2015) Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning (Chapters 3-4). Retrieved from
https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/

McKeachie, W. and Svinicki, M. (2006) McKeachie’s Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research and Theory for College and University Teachers Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin