چكيده به لاتين
Although learners’ autonomy plays a decisive role in online learning (Lynch &Dembo, 2004), teacher autonomy supportiveness rarely examined in this context. Therefore, the study was carried out to investigate two main goals. The first aim of the study was to develop an autonomy-supportive questionnaire. For this purpose, the literature on the topics of autonomy and e-learning was reviewed extensively and the questionnaire was developed, validated by SEM methodology and the reliability was carried out. To accomplish the second goal which was investigating the extent to which Iranian online instructors are autonomy supportive, 60 online instructors and 60 e-learners participated in the study. In order to shed more light on online instructors’ performance and opinion in this regard, an interview was conducted with 10 experienced online teachers. According to the result, although Iranian online instructors did not take developing contextualized material and engaging with the tasks which are related to real-world into the consideration, they were more autonomy supportive in giving awareness and freedom. On the other hand, e-learners perceived their instructors more autonomy supportive particularly in giving freedom and scaffolding. However, the result from e-learners indicated that their instructors were not autonomy-supportive in providing authentic materials and encouraging them to engage in e-forum activities. Furthermore, in an interview with the online instructors, 8 out of 10 instructors asserted that online classes are not important and helpful. The results of this study have some implications for policymakers, teacher educators, and the online instructors. They can take this information into account and run an effective and productive online course by training teachers to be prepared for and being enthusiastic about teaching in this critical environment.
