In recent years there has been widespread interest in the implementation of online courses in universities. While most studies about online learning environments primarily focus on technology‐related issues or instructional methods, little attention has been given to online teachers and their teaching approaches. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of how teachers approach online teaching and the factors affecting individual teachers’ approaches to teaching online, particularly in a fully online university. Nine hundred and sixty‐five (965) online teachers belonging to the Open University of Catalonia were surveyed. The dependent variables include three approaches to teaching online: the Content Acquisition approach, the Collaborative Learning approach, and the Knowledge Building approach. The explanatory variables are socio‐demographics, academic background, online teaching experience, studies taught, online teaching dedication, and teachers’ roles in teaching online. Multiple regression analyses are used to make inferential judgements and test the effects of the independent variables. Findings suggest that age, academic background, online teaching dedication, and especially teachers’ roles in teaching online are important predictors of the adoption of a particular approach to teaching online.

This study approaches teacher learning from a dialogical viewpoint where lecturers’ voices used in a training course context reflect how lecturers generated new professional discourse. The design of the training course considered the analysis of several critical incidents (CIs) in online teaching. An analytical framework based on lecturers’ discourse and ways of thinking about teaching was used to identify types of renaming teaching practice. The empirical element of the study analysed the written utterances about teaching provided by 12 online instructors in order to determine what kinds of new discourse emerged during the analysis of 15 CIs in online teaching. Results showed that local discourse is the lecturers’ most commonly used discourse, prototypical incidents generated more professional discourse than personal and real CIs, and professional discourse can be created by means of at least nine different ways of articulating discourse. On the basis of these results, some pedagogical implications for lecturer learning are discussed.

Introduction. The purpose of this study is to identify the main factors that influence teachers' decision-making regarding the educational use of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) in technology-rich classrooms.Method. We collected data for 278 teachers in Catalonia (Spain) working in eight primary and secondary education schools rich in educational technology. The specific questionnaire used to that end includes an extensive range of items to obtain information about the teachers' perceptions of the factors influencing the use of ICT in the classroom.Results. We have identified and characterized five factors that influence the educational use of ICT in these classrooms, which in this study we call: utility and educational setting, teacher support, availability and access in the classroom, technological expertise and access outside the classroom.Conclusion. These results may be useful for fostering improved integration processes for ICT in the classroom, and also for focusing teaching training about this content.