“In a classroom, the instructor is often the ‘sage on the stage.’ Online, the instructor is more like the ‘sage on the page.’”
—Susan Ko & Steve Rossen
E-learning and online education is defined as “conducting a course partially or entirely through the internet” (Ko & Rossen, 2017, p. 3), and has been around for approximately two decades. Knowles in the 1970s popularized ‘andragogy’ and defined that term as ‘the art and science of helping adults learn’ (Darlo, 2016; Stavredes, 2011; Taylor & Kroth, 2009). Yet, many people—from those for whom life online is second nature to those who struggle to stay abreast with the constantly evolving and dizzying pace of new Web 2.0 technologies—still do not fully grasp the underlying assumptions and principles upon which the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of online instruction are predicated (Ko & Rossen, 2017). Perhaps, this is attributed to the rapid growth of online education. In fact, reliable and effective training for instructors have been scarce, and those that are available tend to be inconsistent and inadequate (Ko & Rossen, 2017). To make matters worse, these trainings too often are offered in a traditional classroom or computer lab setting rather than in real-life teaching situation—i.e., alone at the instructor’s own computer (Stavredes, 2011). The point I am making: “Online education is no longer a novelty” (Ko & Rossen, 2017, p. 5), but its assumptions and principles are for many instructors, both online and face-to-face (F2F).