Student-Instructor Collaboration in Online Courses

A positive collaboration between students and professors in any course regardless of the offering mode, i.e., online or in-class setting, can play a significant role in students' success in the class. Thus, any model of teaching/learning should include a unique component of human interaction (i.e., interaction between instructors and students) to make such models appropriate for implementation. The nature of online courses is such that there is no physical interaction between the instructors and students. Thus, the development and implementation of these models, with constructive collaboration between students and instructors in mind, is more challenging for the instructors. In this paper, we examine issues related to the partnership between students and instructors in online courses and propose steps that can be taken to make this collaboration not only feasible but also effective in persuading students to participate in the partnership throughout the semester actively.