Challenges of Interaction in Online Teaching: A Case Study

This paper explores examples of the interaction between academics and students online, in particular the process of questions and answers generated as a result of the learning process. It highlights the type of questions online students are asking their educators and how they expect their questions to be answered. Also what type of questions the educators expect students to ask and how the educators actually respond to them. The extended hours support offered in some online deliveries results in students relying on individual educators to provide them with detailed support in relation to both administrative and academic problems. The feeling of instant access to educators also creates an expectation of immediate response, which creates a variety of different challenges. This paper examines some of these challenges, and the range of perspectives and disparities between those of the online students´ and the perspectives of the academic staff teaching them. The paper will discuss the issues involved with examples from an online tertiary educational offering in Digital Forensics.