Sharon Hohman

Thanks so much for telling me that. It helps. I happen to really appreciate your flexibility and that of the module authors. I've taken other online courses in the past where the course material and the lecturer's attitudes were very rigid. Yet our students are so diverse. I didn't get it.

Fortunately in the 8 years that I have been teaching online I have not had one student cross the line in any post. In fact their peer posts are often very supportive of one another. I'm going to be positive and trust that an issue won't happen in the future. But after studying this unit I'm going to conduct a self-audit and see what else I can do to shore up the guidelines I currently have established.

I did not expect, when I started this unit, that the telephone would be mentioned as a tech tool. Yet I use it. And I believe that it's effective because a phone call is unexpected by the online student. And its a great way to develop a positive relationship. The student, hearing the teacher's voice, can tell that the teacher respects him/her and is genuinely concerned. So sometimes applying simpler and older tools and applying the KISS (keeping it simple)method can be extremely valuable- until the online instructor gets set to introduce more modern tools.

I really like the idea of assigning students to be discussion monitors. This is something I've done onground but not thought to do online and I think I missed a great opportunity to use this idea in my online class last quarter. I had a very smart but quiet student who I could have assigned this task. I won't hesitate to use this idea in the future.