TY - JOUR AU - Gómez-Rey, Pilar AU - Barbera, Elena AU - Fernández-Navarro, Francisco PY - 2017/04/04 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Student Voices on the Roles of Instructors in Asynchronous Learning Environments in the 21st Century JF - The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning JA - IRRODL VL - 18 IS - 2 SE - Research Articles DO - 10.19173/irrodl.v18i2.2891 UR - https://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/2891 SP - AB - <p class="3">This paper determines which instructional roles and outputs are important in the 21<sup>st</sup> century from the perspective of students in asynchronous learning environments. This research work uses a literature review, in-depth interviews with experts, and a pilot study with students to define the instructors’ outputs. Following this, roles are determined by using a quantitative methodology (in a sample of 925 students). To our knowledge, the remaining research works on this topic identify the online instructors' roles by a qualitative analysis. The findings suggest that a new role, the life skill promoter, has emerged. Furthermore, analysis of the remaining roles (pedagogical, designer, social, technical and managerial) showed that: (i) online instructors are, first and foremost, pedagogues; (ii) the design of the particular online program influences the pedagogical and designer roles and; (iii) the managerial role has declined in importance over the years due to the development of more intuitive and transparent online scenarios from the beginning of the course onward.</p> ER -