John Bohn

Gretchen and all,

I would say there are many subjects courses that cannot be taught COMPLETELY online, but most subjects have at least some basic cognitive or conceptual component to them that COULD be taught online.
This is even true of most sports, trades, and skills. (Think gymnastics, plumbing, juggling -- they are not necessarily completely "hands on)

For the sciences - even math – there are usually always terms (jargon) that must be learned to understand the field well. Even a “hands on” subject like massage (Oooohhh, bad pun in there somewhere) has the non-massage aspects of learning muscle groups, history, techniques, laws, variations, research, patient subsets, clinical patterns of activity related to patient muscle tenseness, and so on. So it is really NOT ALL “hands on” after all!

Of course, no one wants their surgeon, pilot, tattoo artist, wine taster, phlebotomist, etc to have learned their “expertise” ENTIRELY online – it would make no practical sense given the need for learning/practicing (often simulation)/ and assessment of students involving many such topics in a physical F2F venue.

As an example of this, many medical courses are necessarily hybrid in nature, where the student may learn the hands-on component of blood drawing, sterile technique in a clinical situation, EMT Triage, or even basic CPR, in a F2F “Skills Class” AFTER they have successfully passed the online part of the course covering the concepts, theories, jargon/nomenclature, statistics, special situations/special patient subsets, medico-legal aspects, etc of whatever the hybrid course deals with.

This makes the learning process benefit from the best of both worlds, and is remarkably more flexible and student-sensitive in the package deal format.

Having said all this, however, I realize that that many subjects PREVIOUSLY thought to not be teachable totally online, in fact CAN be now with the right design and tools. It takes thinking out of the box and close scrutiny to genuinely assessing student competence – so it is not simply a sham competence. After all, if someone fixes my brakes or does Lasix surgery on me -- their experience better go beyond an online course- Yikes!

Kelly Wilkinson

Nancy,

You make a great point. We do have to look at what is needed to learn a skill and what is the best course of action. Many times, thinking "outside" the box regarding the use of technology provides interesting solutions.

Dr. Kelly Wilkinson

Nancy Rose

There are some courses that present more problems than others. Any course which is better learned kinesthetically offers challenges when the student is trying to learn on line. Anytime manual dexterity is part of the learning, a demonstration is most often needed to help the student. And instant feedback by the instructor, IF they are doing it wrong would be beneficial.
OR the student will be learning in error along the way, and usually not get the full instruction and knowledge needed to grasp the content of the course.

Kelly Wilkinson

Ava,

True! Do you provide a time to "talk" with students as in virtual office hours?

Dr. Kelly Wilkinson

Kelly Wilkinson

Gretchen,

That is a tough question. I have colleagues that are teaching robotics online with great success and that includes interaction with a lab component. It takes planning and looking at what publishers have to offer to make the content engaging.

Dr. Kelly Wilkinson

Ava Tausz

I would think teaching math and logical mathematical progression is very difficult for some students to grasp with out that immediate one2one feedback. Like when they get "stuck" on what the next step is or what part of the problem they can't seem to get correct. This requires another set of eyes to see where they are making their mistakes and then reply in mathematical symbols to show the steps. I do not know about never being taught but it does take a very self disciplined and motivated student to research how to solve difficult problems and then understand the text.