My New Adventure in Online Teaching

After completing my course review I am, perhaps more than ever, aware of just how much work still needs to be put into this course.  I really never conceived until I started laying out all the parts what it was going to mean to put everything together.  I must admit that at one point this week, I was pretty frustrated.  As I was plodding along, working on my course, I realized that I wasn’t getting very far, very fast and that the amount of work required seemed ridiculous.  My emotions ran the spectrum from a little bit of anger at being asked to complete a task that I didn’t entirely think was realistic, to disappointment in myself that, even though I thought I had caught up, I obviously was still just treading water.  I’ve settled somewhere in the middle but regardless I decided to just put and shut up and make my way through the remainder of the course development process.

In terms of what I need to complete my online course, I need a few things – the largest of which is more time.  I am simply running out of hours in the day to do things (by the way, in case anyone remembers from the beginning of the semester, we are still trying to buy a house… the most frustrating process ever).  I also need Moodle to cooperate.  It is doing things that are unexpected and it can be very frustrating.  But I believe I have all the basic tools, ideas, documents, and outlines I need – it just has to come all together.

As far as what I’ve learned about myself – I’ve learned that I need to stop biting off more than I can chew and try and focus my efforts and one or two tasks and do them really well.  This summer has been a testament to how not to pace one’s self.  Surprisingly, I’ve learned that I actually like online teaching and really think it may have a place in the high school curriculum someday.  I can absolutely say that I would not have thought that 10 weeks ago.

Finally, I’ve decided that theory is easy and practical application is a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.  Teaching presence, in particular is critical at the early stages of course development because it is your thoughts, ideas, notions, and movements that will either make or sink your students course.  I’ve constantly considered and reconsidered the importance of my role as the teacher as I’ve laid out Module after Module.  And as can often happen, I’ve realized that theory isn’t always easily (or even possibly) applied to the real world.

Three more weeks to go – I think I’m going to make it. (3)

I am a person that needs to have control.  It has always been true.  I like to be in charge, I like to have all of my ducks in a row.  I even wanted to be a football referee growing up.  That’s right, not a football star, a referee.  I was drawn to the order, authority, and structure the referee provide for the chaos happening on the field.  I am certain that my teaching style reflects that.  My point system for grading students is elaborate.  My course organization is detailed down to the day in most cases.  As Alex points out, even when I am spontaneous, I feel the need to do it in a structured way.  And because I put so much effort into creating structure, I get very frustrated when I have to change it.  That’s part of what has made this course so difficult for me.  I’m just not good at change and, as I’ve noted before, online teaching requires me to do something I hate – completely rethink my approach.  This course has brought that fact to the forefront of my mind and really caused me to examine why structure is so important to me.  I suppose there is some deep psychological answer -maybe Jim could help me with that question.  Nevertheless, I am what I am and I’m really trying to work within myself to achieve success in this course.

So, in designing my course, I continue to emphasize structure.  Even things like the consistency and clarity of document formatting is important.  Unfortunately, one of my struggles is that amount of time this course is taking.  Because these details are so important to me, I want everythng to be perfect and I’m not sure creating an entire course “perfectly” given the time I’m able to spend on the course is possible.  I haven’t entirely solved this problem yet and so I continue to put off an awful lot of other things in my life to try and get my course where I want it to be.

I’ve also learned that when I loose control of the structure I have a tendency to procrastinate and put things off.  You’ve probably noticed that many of my posts come in the latter half of the module.  I know this to be true and it is something I’d like to change but doubt that I ever will.  So the answer is quite obviously that I need to maintain organization and structure from the beginning.  As I’ve mentioned before, it seems this courses bounces around so much that I’ve never quite been able to focus my efforts.  It didn’t help initially that this was my first online course and I wasn’t too sure what I was getting into.  Now I at least know what to expect – something that is very important to people who need control.

By the way, I hope all of this doesn’t make me sound like a complete control freak or crazy person.  I’m really not but I’m being as honest as I can.  Lastly, Alex asked us to discuss how we want to communicate with our students and how we want to present ourselves.  First, I want to be seen as organized, consistent, and clear.  I’m certain that every student feels more comfortable when expectations and the pathways to success are clear.  What I’ve also learned in this course is the instructor needs to be a voice of support and I hope to do that for my students.  At various points I’ve just about lost my mind and felt the need to share that with Alex.  She’s always talked me down of the metaphorical ledge and assured me that I would make it.  I have seen plenty of students who didn’t feel like they could approach their teacher either have a minor meltdown or just quit on the class.  Obviously neither is good so being seen as a friendly (though still firm) person is important.

Okay, I think I’ve beared enough of my sole for one night. (4)

Holy Smokes!!! I am beat!  I’m sitting here at the end of a very long day in front of the computer and I’m not sure which way is up.  Nevertheless, I plod on.  Interestingly, this Module’s blog is all about look back at what I suppose is about the halfway point of the course and discussing what I’ve gotten out of it.  First, I had no concept of just how hard it is to plan on online course.  It took hours just for me to figure out how I was going to break the course into “chunks”  Then I had to pace out the timing of each module, construct the outline of what I wanted to teach and how I wanted to teach it, and then put flesh on the bones.  In short, I’ve learned something that I suspect Alex is not going to be happy with… I don’t think it is realistic to do your entire course ahead of time.  Absolutely, I agree a general and in fact pretty specific plan must be in place.  But to design each and every activity ahead of time doesn’t seem realistic.  Obviously some folks are able to do it.  I’m not sure I fit in that category.  In F2F teaching, I’ve found general wisdom to be that it takes 3 runs of a course before you really have it where you want it.  I suspect that is largely going to be true in online teaching also.

As far as my own courses goes, I’ve decided that structure and consistency are the most important thing I can do to help my students since every one of them will be first time learners.  I already recognize that this will require me to sacrifice spontaneity and creativity at times but I think on balance it is the right way to go.  I also find that I’m still being pulled back toward my old methods and am having a hard time reinventing my approach for the online format.  When I completed my course outline, I felt like it really resembled my traditional style course more than perhaps it should.  One of my goal is to improve on that as the course development process continues.

Finally, at the halfway point I can definitely reach a few conclusions about the course.  First – don’t ever, ever get behind.  Catching up is a nightmare.  Two, I would suggest less disparate activities.  I continue to feel like we bounce all over the place from blogs, to discussions, to written activities, to building activates, to diigo, to twitter and back.  I do feel like a few of these mediums could be condensed and streamlined.  It might feel a bit less fracture.  That’s what isn’t working for me.  What is working ultimately is that I’m learning a great deal about myself and online teaching.  The course is really living up to its name.  This has been a terrific introduction on online education.

I’m embarrassed to say that this post is related to our initial blogging assignment.  In my original haste to get caught up after starting late, I missed this assignment all together – just never saw it.  Alex suggested that I post any way so here goes.  For those who can think back what seems like a million years ago (our first module) the question was after completing the tasks and assignments and in considering the demographics trends of our students, we were to reflect on our thoughts of the course up to that point.  Oddly enough, even though it was weeks ago, I can clearly remember what i was thinking.

First, after viewing the “Did you Know” video, reviewing the Suny Online Networks statistics, and completing the self-assessment activity, I quickly realized that it certainly seems that both our students and our teachers (or at least myself), have the technical skills to approach a future of online teaching.  I was actually quite surprised at how little you really needed to know about computers to become an effective online teacher.  I also was reminded that in many cases, our students technical skills often far surpass our own and that our course development and approach to online teaching should be informed by that fact. 

My other overriding feeling at the time (which I’m pleased to say has been lifted to some extent) is a sense of being on a roller coaster.  Terms which are a bit more familiar to me now like blogging, diigo, forums, posts, and tags made my head spin and I often didn’t know whether I was coming or going.  Having said that, I’ve finally gotten caught up and look forward to the second half of the course being a bit more paced and less frenetic for me.(3)