For those that don’t know, I am the Director of Technology for Great Lakes Christian College. I am the one-man tech department here at the school. Among my responsibilities is helping our faculty integrate technology into the classroom. We currently have Moodle as our LMS and more and more of our faculty are utilizing the different features of it. However, we have gotten a lot of feedback in recent years about our lack of online classes. So last year we started offering classes fully online. Up until then, many of our classes were considered hybrid classes, that is to say they had in-class time as well as an online element. In an effort to help along this process of getting more classes online at GLCC, myself along with the Vice President of Academic Affairs are going to be reading this book, and then develop a training course for our faculty to go through so they can be more prepared to teach online.
So, as I stated before, this blog is going to have my reflections on the current book that I am reading. This is for accountability as much for thinking through the ideas presented in the book. Please feel free to comment, in fact I encourage it. So now it is time to begin.
Chapter 1 – Teaching Online: An Overview
By the title of the chapter you will assume correctly that this was a general overview. One of the great things about this book is the fact that they take time to help you understand the jargon that is used in the online learning world. Even though I know most of the terms, when I look at this from the perspective of someone who is new to the online learning world, this is very helpful.
One of the first things they hit on is the convenience of online learning, not only for the student, but also for the teacher. The author talked about how you can literally teach from anywhere there is an internet connection. Let’s say for instance I am teaching an online class. If I happen to be sick on day, I have internet at my house, so I can still check in on my class, or maybe I am in Florida at a conference, I can still post to the discussion boards while sitting having coffee in the lobby, or even during a boring session. The same is true for students. They don’t have to be in a certain classroom of a certain building at a certain time anymore. School is 24/7/365. And it isn’t limited to a computer anymore either. Smartphones, tablets, and other portable devices can access the same information. So even if there isn’t a free wifi signal for me to leech from, I can be on my iPhone and still check in on the class. So the freedom and convenience for faculty and students is amazing.
One of the interesting stats the author wrote about as well, is how online learning isn’t a novelty anymore. In a Sloan Consortium Survey, in the US alone, nearly 20% of all higher education students in the fall of 2007 were taking at least one online course. And that was 4 years ago. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that number much higher now. In 2008, over 55% of South Korean internet users were using the Internet for the purpose of accessing education and learning. And again, now in 2011, those numbers are bound to be greater.
The Author went on to give two case studies, one of a teacher who’s class was completely online, and the other who’s class was a hybrid. After the case studies the author dove into what it meant to teach in either situation. She said that one of the most daunting tasks was to teach a course completely online. However, what Ko suggests is that the same strategies that you have done for “on the ground” classes can still work, setting goals, describing specific objectives, defining the required tasks, creating relevant assignments, they all apply to online classes as well. The difference is that with online, there are different techniques you must use and you must discover new ways of finding learning and teaching opportunities. And the most important of these is…The Written Word. In “on the ground” courses, the teacher stands in front of the class and gives a lecture, but there is so much more than words that are communicated. Body language, intonation, expressions, gestures, and all sorts of other non-verbal forms of communication. In the online world we don’t have that, we have 
;) 
>:( Thats right, emoticons are suppose to transfer our emotions in what we are talking about. Anyone see an issue here? Emoticons can’t convey all the nuances that we want to get across in the written word. Therefore, one of the most important things for online teaching, and I believe for online learners, are good writing skills. Teaching a class fully online is challenging, there is no doubt about that, but teaching a blended course isn’t a walk in the park either.
With blended or hybrid course, teachers need to now split time. In a non-blended course, teachers will have certain expectations of their student’s out-of-class time. When adding online elements, you are adding out-of-class time. However, you can do this simply by looking at ways in which the Internet can further your students learning. In the case study, the teacher put her notes online before class. She noticed a marked difference. Student would come to class, with the notes printed off and pay more attention to her lecture, because they already had the notes. They were also coming to class with more engaging questions, since they had weren’t busy furiously scribbling down everything that came up on the screen. Instead, the were doing more critical thinking on the subject, and after all, isn’t that one of our end goals, to get student to think critically about different subjects?
In the end of the chapter, Ko covered a couple of normal questions she gets from people. Two that I personally liked were “What about support personnel and training?” I first read this and though they were talking about having a support system to help with the online teaching, but what they were really asking was shouldn’t someone else design my class for me? Ko points out that support personnel, The tech guys or TAs have their own jobs. Tech guys are fixing hardware and software issues and TAs won’t necessarily know more about computer than the teacher will. The other question was “Do I have to be a computer expert?” Short answer, no. Do you know what the internet is? Can you download a file and open it? Can you e-mail? Can you use a word-processing program like Word? If you said yes to those thing, then you are smart enough to do this.
Overall the first chapter was quite interesting, and I think it would be very encouraging to read if you were starting out in the Online Learning world. I look forward to digging in more to this book, and continuing to write here about what I find. Sorry this is so long, but what can I say, I found it interesting.
Peace be with you.
