Impact of Instructor Experience in OLEs

Open Learning Environments (OLEs) are dynamics, effective methods of learning outside of the traditional educational approaches.  Hannifan, Land and Oliver (1999) clearly delineated many of the benefits to implementing OLEs for certain situations.  The authors also allude to situations where OLEs may not be possible, mostly due to time constraints or standardization needs.   While the article discussed many of the strengths and weaknesses of these two approaches, as well as the techniques to be used by the instructor, it left me wondering if there are any prescriptions or recommendations as to the ideal background of the instructor.

Does an OLE require a more experienced teacher/instructor?  OLEs, especially those within the externally induces or individually generated Enabling Contexts (Hannifan et al., 1999), can meander down an infinite number of potential solution paths as the learner pursues non-prescribed solutions.  This is due to the often realistic/ authentic context of the learning, which can delve into topics which may not have been foreseen.   Does this require an instructor with more real-world experience (compared to an academic background)?  As the learner makes meaning and comes to solutions, it is possible that no list of correct answers exists.  Does this mean that an OLE instructor needs to be more adaptable within the subject matter, and more aware of minute details that may be outside of the scope of standardized instruction? 

Additionally, an instructor/teacher/trainer with significant experience may be necessary to evaluate to what degree learning has occurred, both formatively and summatively.   A student may not have learned strict theory, but has developed an acute ability to apply theory to solving real-world problems.  But, due to the lack of static evaluative resources often available to the teachers in traditional classrooms, such as quizzes/tests/etc., I wonder if the burden of proving knowledge transfer requires a SME who is intimately familiar with the what might make an individual proficient in a given field. 

I thought that some of the authors’ description of challenges with OLEs was interesting, and I wonder if instructor background might be another limitation to this otherwise excellent instructional method.