Managing Internal and Distance Teaching Deliveries with a Common Online Learning Platform: Instructor Perspectives

Online education has gained much popularity among higher education student communities as it facilitates any-time and any-place learning. Instructors are often tasked with delivering a course simultaneously in two modes, namely internal (within campus) mode and distance (outside campus) mode. In doing so, they work towards designing instructional practices over an institution approved teaching and learning platform and aim to bring similar learning experience to both internal and distance student cohorts. This study offers an experiential view from instructors' perspective on how they adapt their teaching deliveries to meet the needs of the different student cohorts. The Activity Theory (AT) elements have been used to analyze the instructor perspectives. Our study finds that the AT elements in the outer triangle (tools, rules and division of labor) represent the primary mediating elements which facilitate the inner triangle elements (subject, community and aim) in reaching the desired outcome.