From face-to-face teaching to online distance education classes: some challenges and surprise

Many educators in higher education are now delivering their courses online. For some however this move was initially a reluctant one as it was difficult to perceive how their face-to-face classes could be successfully transported into the online medium. This paper describes the journey of one academic who took on the challenge ofdeveloping a knowledge building online distance education community. It describes the model used to guide this process and reports on the interaction that occurred. The challenges and surprises are described.