Online Teaching and Learning: Going Beyond the Information Given

In this chapter three basic features of online teaching and learning representing a paradigmatic change in the field are explored regardless the tensions/resistance generated on academics: (1) the shared construction of knowledge through digital instructional interaction; (2) the growing curriculum flexibility facilitated by an open and boundless Internet, and (3) the progress of multimodal digital formats, which demand adequate communication skills from teachers and students. The first aspect entails the possibility of collaborative knowledge creation through online communication, which requires dialogic scaffolding grounded on discourse comprehension and production strategies, going beyond the mere transmission and exchange of information. The second issue reflects the expansion and openness of the knowledge available on the Web, turning closed curricula based on limited resources into obsolete and reductive options. Third, multimodality involves an expressive leap, a change in meaning design, given the linguistic components are no longer the primary vehicle of meaning, which rather arises from a synergic mix of elements such as image, sound, and motion. These issues are approached and exemplified concerning the complex Latin American context, where the changes in the academic profession (scholarship) brought about by digitality (digital scholarship) have had a varying impact. Furthermore, some of the biggest challenges that higher education presents in LA nowadays are related, first, to the sociopolitical demands for higher education for all citizens, in a massive form that does not match the instructional models of online education on which the personal relationship between teachers and students is essential. Second, the need for empowerment of the Latin American faculty team in general, and not just some elite of professors in some elite universities. The conclusions can be summed up by stating that the paradigmatic triad (i.e., shared knowledge construction, Web as curriculum and multimodal communication) allows us to go “beyond the information given”, re-signifying Bruner’s powerful expression.