Authentic e-Learning Perspectives from Online Facilitators in a Developing Country

Although the implementation of e-learning has reached advanced stages in developed countries, it is still in its infancy in many developing countries. This paper examined the benefits and challenges of e-learning as well as the concept of authentic e-learning. To better understand authentic learning in online environments in developing countries, data was collected from 52 faculty members of an institution in India. As participants of a Faculty Online Facilitation course, the faculty members were asked to share their views on how they would go about establishing presence and facilitating an online class in their institution. They were also asked to share their preferred choice of communication tools and elaborate on the reasons for selecting the tools. The data was analysed using the text mining approach. The findings of the study provide pedagogical implications on how to design and facilitate authentic e-learning courses for higher education institutions in developing countries.