Real-time online collaborative coaching pedagogy: Towards contextualization

Is the future of online learning shifting away from self-paced education to a more collaborative real-time process? What kind of pedagogy supports learning through real-time online collaboration? This paper takes the real-time collaborative learning that occurs in web-based learning environments as an example in which collaboration can be created by design that supports, for example, cooperative assignments in study groups, peer interaction and appraisal, and group assessment. Coaching in online education can be a way to realize this kind of synchronized collaborative learning, and coaching pedagogy dictates that each student has a personal coach and that each coaching group also has a coach of its own. Coaching pedagogy works on at least two levels: first, on a long-term basis (i.e. throughout the course of a student’s studies), and, second, in a substantive context on a specific course or module. This brief paper reflects on a study which aimed to contextualize coaching pedagogy in real-time online learning environments by systematic literature review.