WHY ONLINE TEACHING AMPLIFIES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN INSTRUSTORS' SUCCESS

Abstract

Empirical studies show that online teaching amplifies the differences between instructors: more successful instructors become even more successful, while the results of the instructors who were not very successful becomes even worse. There is a simple explanation for why the performance of not-perfect instructors decreases: in online teaching, there is less feedback, so these instructors get an indication that their teaching strategies do not work well even later than usual and thus, have fewer time to correct their teaching. However, the fact that the efficiency of good instructors rises is a mystery. In this paper, we provide a possible explanation for this mystery.