Missing in Action: Looking at the Humanisation of Online Higher Education Through a TPACK Lens

Abstract

The TPACK Framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) has become a valuable tool for analysing teaching, learning and course design. Teachers use TPACK as a guide to meaningfully integrate ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) into their work while developing varied types of teacher knowledge. The usefulness of TPACK has extended into online university teaching contexts which have sometimes been regarded as lacking a sense of belonging or as being dehumanised and disinviting. To reverse this trend, Reeves and Herrington (2010) have called for a greater emphasis on student engagement in university courses while Salmon (2013) has appealed for more focus on the actions of online teachers and students. In response to these calls, this chapter uses the TPACK Framework as a lens through which online course design literature is viewed to extract practical principles for the development of personalised, interactive and humanised online courses. By drawing on research about online presence and emotionality, aspects of online education that have yet to be explored in conjunction with TPACK, the chapter offers educators a set of humanising online course design guidelines to promote engagement and satisfaction while also contributing to our understanding of TPACK.