In my 14 years of online teaching I find it EASIER to manage conflicts with students ONLINE than face to face. Email gives me time to craft my response for MAXIMUM impact. Losing control of the situation is almost eliminated because I set the pace. This is especially important when a student is trying to "push your buttons." I can cover all bases and nip potential problems in the bud. While I am good at thinking on my feet, I prefer to use the written word when dealing with uncooperative students.

I don’t agree with everything presented in this mod. I have conducted synchronous chat sessions with more than 20 participants successfully. The chat day and time was determined for each section of the course and the student signed up for the section that was convenient for them. It was fast paced, fun, informative and promoted maximum participation for everyone. As soon as this same university changed their policy on chat sessions, allowing faculty to set a day and time, student participation dropped off to damn near nothing and this leaning tool was reduced to a useless waste of time. I don’t teach for that school any longer. Live chats are a waste of time without at least 10 to 15 participants. Otherwise, use discussion boards and email to communication information.

I see posts that are 5 years old. And, there are no instructions on what I'm supposed to do after taking the first quiz. Do the necessary ingrediants for a good online class only apply to students? Or, should they also apply to courses taken by faculty as well?

Creating a dynamic syllabus is the key to drawing the students in. Describing all your expectations of the students as well as the expectations of yourself is very important. I always tell my student what they should expect from me and in turn what I expect from them. I also include a description of the course and the assignments. The last element is ways that students can contact me. I list a lot of different options so that students feel comfortable to contact me in many ways.

I have a question. I am new to online teaching, and it is really important to me that I maintain a good presence in the online environment. Right now I have one student, and I am having an issue with the students responding to me. The student does post discussions, but whenever there may be a problem with an assignment, and I e-mail and ask if there is any help she needs or she does not understand to please let me know. She also does not come to the virtual office hours. Some teachers have suggested giving the students a call, but I am wondering if that would be invading their space? Does anyone have any hints on how to reach out, but not going too far or doing too much? Thank you.

F2F and virtual campuses march to different beats. For profit and traditional campuses differ as well especially on class sizes, instructor role and involvement, as well as venues of communication and contact hours. Other than the accreditors' requirements and rationale, should the responsibilities and expectations of the instructors vary? Your views are solicited with thanks. Samia

As I begin to teach more and more online, I have tried to use a new tool each time I teach a new course. I have become more proficient with using blogs and wikis. More recently, I have established an account in SKYPE. What prompted this was an invitation from one of my students to participate in one of their team meetings where they were discussing their team project. I have learned much about SKYPE and have enjoyed the interaction with students. Dr. Marcia L. Brown, PMP

Feedback is an essential aspect of learning. How can teachers make it more relevant and helpful to students?

I have encountered at least one student in every course who feels it is his or her responsibility to let a fellow student know how terrible their discussion post was. How would you recommend dealing with these types of students?

I have encountered at least one student in every course who feels it is his or her responsibility to let a fellow student know how terrible their discussion post was. How would you recommend dealing with these types of students?

I have a very hard time giving credit for students who post late to the discussion boards. In my opinion, these posts are no longer relevant once the week has passed and it is unfair to their fellow students who did not have the advantage of seeing their posts. Often though I do have cases of students with good reasons why they could not post on time. How do others handle this situation?

While I understand that welcoming each student to the course personally could possibly make a huge difference in their participation this seems rather time consuming especially when you have multiple classes starting at the same time. Would a group email welcoming them possibly achieve the same outcome. This is assuming in the email you introduce yourself and let them know you are available for questions by phone as well as email?

I have previously taught at ground schools, but never online until recently. I have now been teaching online for almost a year, but am still learning how to be an effective online teacher. Could you please share some of your most successful strategies you use when teaching online?

One of the things that I find very effective both from the perspective of the instructor and the perspective of the student is personal experience. When discussing a concept in either synchronous or asynchronous contexts, the instructor can introduce situations in which he or she has been personally involved (from a professional standpoint). Students participating in either type of discussion can also share experiences with a particular concept. Both of these additions to the discussion help underscore the essence of concept introduced in that part of the course.

The facilitator roles characterized by the shoes (Instructor, Social director, Program manager and Technical advisor) offer a vivid image of how fluid we should be in the online environment. The idea of looking at my feet while dealing with an online student and noticing that my shoes don’t match (left shoe different than the right shoe) makes me smile and not feel uncomfortable at all. Being able to multi-role is one of the most challenging aspects— I think— of the online environment and the hallmark of a proficient facilitator. In fact, there are other roles that seem to emerge, such as that of a therapist. Student frustrations from previous courses, overloads because of late work, personal or professional worries that start interfering with the learning process, and self-doubts are some of the situations that bring learning to a stand-still. So in order to jump start the learning process again, I find myself wearing another set of shoes, those of a therapist. Once students feel better and overcome the effects of these personal situations, then I’m ready to go back to my main shoes (Instructor, Social director, Program manager and Technical advisor). Although I don’t wear therapist shoes all the time, I know where they are along with some other pairs used less frequently. What matters to me is being able to continue recognizing the need for multiple roles (or shoes, should I say) and the ability to sustain the best possible learning environment. So “if the shoe fits… wear it!”

I’m wondering if the lines defining synchronous and asynchronous learning are becoming more blurred —at least in practice. There are synchronous activities (e.g., video, text chats, teleconferences) that are recorded and made available to those unable to attend so they can view and benefit from in asynchronous mode. On the other had there are asynchronous activities that are moving closer to the synchronous ways, like virtual libraries that have a live chat or video available if librarians are needed, or the social networking topic that became viral and has everyone’s attention resulting in an unplanned live chat. I had an interesting conversation with an engineering educator that suggested learning in the future could be “virtually-synchronous”, meaning that with more computing power and more refined artificial intelligence algorithms a class can by conducted “real time” at any time by the real life instructor or by the real-life instructor’s avatar. So you could log on and take a class at any time and the class would be a true simulation (e.g., with other students participating, questions answered) of what would have happened if everyone were together at the same time. This got me thinking, but the truth is that regardless, what we know about synchronous and asynchronous learning will still prevail. I’m not sure I can accept the premise that technology dictates learning modes. Technology is relevant, but the primary objective is learning.

As a creative writer I'm always curious whether to share my "work" as in the books I've published. I don't want students to feel like they need to "buy" my book, but at the same time I like sharing with them that English can really get them somewhere. What do you think?

One thing I noted in this unit is that it is best to use syncronous instruction with a single student rather than with a large group. I see the point and agree...however, my school presents us with group "chats" and these are the ones that are held in a sychronous form. On the other hand, it would be very difficult to hold these chats individually simply because of the large number of students involved. Any ideas of how best to balance these two situations?

If reusable learning objects are not available what best practices can be implemented to design and develop eLearning content? When developing a Learning Object, first and foremost, you have to define or know your course objectives. In e-learning, especially those without a synchronous component, the material has to be easily understood. Since an e-learning object often takes the part of the role of an face-to-face instructor, the material needs to be relevant, recent, and applicable to real-life scenarios. I also think it’s important to make sure your data repository (if using one) is accurate and up to date. There is nothing more off-putting than outdated or unprofessional material (in my opinion). There are also issues with copyright related to e-learning, especially in art history – my subject matter. I cannot tell you how many hours I spent requesting copyright permissions on Ancient Egyptian art images during one particular course development contract. Wiki Commons, Creative Commons are great for images. Since I deal quite a bit with Modern Art – most of which is still copyright protected – I use a LOT of hyperlinks my class development. Not ideal, and requires some maintenance, but it is an art history course and they HAVE to be looking at images. According to Rachel Smith’s Guidelines for Authors of Learning Objectives, the interactive component is important (p. 2). Students want to engage in their own learning, so having the students have control to proceed through the knowledge, or even taking different paths, etc. is important. This is where different modalities (audio, text, video, etc.) come in. Of course, it has to be user friendly, since you will have students in their first online class mixed with students who’ve been dealing with the internet and ‘online activities’ since middle school. Another critical aspect is the software ‘technology gap’ – the tools must be accessible for all to view on most computers or web browsers. Last, but not least, it’s important to consider it’s re-usability so you are not re-creating the wheel for each learning object. References: Harman, K. and Koohang, A. (2007). Learning Objects: Standards, Metadata, Repositories & LCMS. Informing Science Press. Smith, R. (2004). Guidelines for Authors of Learning Objectives. The New Media Consortium. McGraw Hill.

I think it's extremely important that the online instructor lead the student in the direction of obtaining as much information about the subject by self-exploration. When the student displays what he or she has found, either on a discussion board or in a written project, it's important to communicate to the student the positive aspects of what he or she has discovered and distinguish those items that are important from those that are either of lesser importance or irrelevant.