International award for effective practice in online learning

Earlier this year, Deakin University engineering lecturer and distance education expert Dr John Long was awarded a prestigious Online Learning Consortium Effective Practice award.

The Online Learning Consortium (OLC), is a professional organisation ‘devoted to providing best practice instruction, research, publications and guidance to educators around the world’.

A member of Deakin’s School of Engineering, Dr Long received the award for ‘Online Learning in an Engineering Physics Course’.

‘Distance teaching is by no means easy, and requires a lot of dedication from the teacher. Keeping up with technology and ever-increasing student expectations is probably the biggest challenge I face,’ Dr Long said.

‘As in all teaching, the rewards lie in watching the students learn. Distance education is designed for those students who otherwise are unable to attend on-campus classes. Knowing that I am delivering a service to them unavailable in most other places is one of the rewards of distance teaching.

‘Another is knowing that at Deakin in general, and in the School of Engineering in particular, we offer something that is quite unique world-wide. For example, the United States is only recently grappling with the same issues in online learning that Deakin has been dealing with for many years. We are well ahead of the pack in this respect.’

The award was announced in March this year. Read more about Dr Long’s award on the OLC website.