What does the ideal online class look like?
I've been teaching online and designing online courses for going on 8 years now. I think this is a good time to assess what's working and what's not working.
So, my question to the group goes something like this: if you could build an online class from scratch, what would it look like?
Would you start with an LMS or ditch it? Would you even include asynchronous discussion questions? Are there tools and technologies that we should be using that aren't being employed now?
Personally, I feel that we need to build more synchronous opportunities into our online courses. This interaction between students and between students and their professor is of the utmost important in building community. What are some techniques or tools that you have employed that might provide for more synchronous opportunities?
Very well stated here and some great questions. I lean towards whatever the school I am working for chooses as it is their own learning structure and I would follow what they require.
Good question, Stuart. I've had the opportunity to design my online courses from scratch, and they are not perfect, not by a long shot, but the feedback I get from my online students is much better, overall, than the feedback I get from my face-to-face students. Students these days seem to enjoy accessing course content whenever they would like to, repeatedly if necessary, and on their own terms, using their own learning styles. They do report that they miss the social interaction of the face-to-face classroom, and yet my face-to-facers sometimes complain that too much of class time is spent not focusing on the course material.
Getting back to your original question: I agree that both synchronous and asynchronous discussion is ideal, but getting online students to agree to a set time is nearly impossible, I've found. The best option would be a hybrid course, where the second session is either a face-to-face session, or students agree to show up in some kind of virtual and synchronous learning environment at the same time.
I do think the current online classroom is vastly limited by current offerings of the LMS, but when I try to ameliorate by adding in Twitter, Facebook, or HootCourse, students just get cranky about all the sites they have to visit. They want one-stop shopping, I think.
This topic of yours could spawn an entire course!
Stuart,
This is a good question. The design depends on the course and content in my opinion. There is no one perfect model. Some courses and content lend themselves better to more synchronous interactions and others asynch. We also have to be aware of our accreditation agreements. Our institution is SACs accredited and when we got approval for online delivery we had to specify how that delivery was going to take place. If you got approved for an all asynch. program and start requiring the majority of the work in synch. form then the institution will have issues.
Now back to your questions. I use a hybrid of all of these in my courses based on what I am trying to accomplish with my students. I do a lot of custom video for them (in skills classes) and they love it, I do synch. help and interaction sessions. I do some discussion forums. I use a CMS/LMS for management of the course but use outside resources as well. Some students like our campus's 3D virtual worlds built on the OpenQwaq platform. It is an interesting platform that really just integrates our other learning tools in to a virtual world with avatars. Next big thing, when we can have holograms of our virtual students in our traditional classrooms interacting with the traditional students in real time...or in our houses - that would bring a new concept to the "hybrid" course.
Herbert Brown III
