My New Adventure in Online Teaching

Well, I think it is finally about time to start wrapping things up.  I wanted to use this last blog to discuss some of the suggestions that my reviewers and Alex had about my online course.

Suggestion 1 – Add a discussion about “Netiquette” – totally agree, especially given that my students will be essentially adolescents, a few ground rules for discussion is probably worthwhile.  I’ve since added it and I think it makes sense.

Suggestion 2 – Try to look at the course from the point of view of the student.  I completely agree with this but have to confess that I have done very little of it.  I think largely because I was so focused on structuring the course properly, I lost sight of some of the little things that make a course feel “friendly”.  For example, fun names for activities or appropriate jokes add a great deal to my regular course, so I can imagine they would also help my online course.  Having said that – I haven’t done much about it yet.  Frankly, I’m tired and I don’t think I have that left in me at this point.  But at some point when this course eventually does go live, I hope to remember this advice and just make it a little more approachable.

Suggestion 3 – Don’t have documents pop-up in separate windows.  I have to admit, I don’t really agree with this one.  I think there are certain documents where it makes sense to have them pop-up in different windows.  For example, your “What’s Due When” documents should pop up so that it is easy to toggle back and forth between assignment areas and what is effectively the syllabus.  The part I do agree with in great to pop-up or not to pop-up debate is that regardless of which you choose, you should try and remain consistent.

Suggestion 4: Make activity labels on your home page more descriptive.  I also tend to agree though some times I think keeping things as simple as possible on the homepage, and adding more content once the person clicks on a specific file makes sense.  But the point is well taken.

As I noted earlier, it would be disingenuous for me to suggest that I’ll be implementing all of these changes immediately.  There is a great deal of work to be done still.  But it is my hope that a year or two down the road, we’ll be able to offer our very first online course and Spring Valley High School, and it will be AP Macroeconomics with Mr. Hooper.  That would not be possible without the knowledge I’ve gained from this course.  Thanks for a great semester.

This course has taught me a great deal about myself and about online teaching.  The first thing I’ve learned is that I need structure, deadlines, and clear expectations.  Alex had provided those and for the most part, it’s been helpful.  I am taking another online course in which the expectations are far more nebulous and deadlines are extremely broad.  I have not been successful because I’ve allowed far too much to wait until the last minute.  That’s certainly a commentary on myself as much as anything else, but I plan on providing structure to my students because I see how much it’s helped me.

Technically, I’ve also learned a number of new skills.  For example, I had no idea how to use Voicethread or Jing prior to this course.  The fact that I was able to successfully implement them in my course development is a testament to how well I was trained.   I also learned so much about best practices – particularly in online teaching but even in f2f teaching.  For example, the structure of an online course, the fact that so much needs to be prepared ahead of time, the fact that different techniques for assessment and instruction have to be implemented was quite foreign to me before this course.  Understanding the flow of online course, how it is designed and implemented, and even what tools are available has shed light on a realm of education that I had previously been in the dark about.

One of things that came out of online teaching is the need for rubrics and crystal clear expectations.  Though I’ve always used rubrics, the level of detail required for an online course where the instructor isn’t in your face everyday is far greater.  I came to realize that rubrics in my f2f class should be far more extensive and detailed.  I’ve already begun working on one to access in-class discussion and class participation.

Finally, I think if I was to say that anything hindered my learning it would be that there were far too many different activities happening at one time.  I’ve voiced this concern before but in the design of my course I eliminated things like Diigo, blogs, and limited the number of required responses to a discussion.  In an absolutely perfect world, I’m not sure that was the best thing to do.  Nevertheless, I believe ability of a typical high school student to focus requires that less things happen all at once.  There were many times that I was frustrated and remember thinking I had just done a ton of work (like tonight) for the course and then realized I had one more things to do – like this damn blog!!!

At any rate, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve had my moment of frustration with this course, but what I will take away from it is so much more than any all-nighter I might have put in.  I now feel confident to teach my own online courses and hope to begin implementing a hybrid online program in the 2010-2011 school year.   This class has given me that kind of confidence and I’m all the better for it. (3)

Well, it is just a few days after the bulk of our online course work was due and I for one am exhausted.  I can say that with the possible exception of writing my master’s thesis, I have never worked so hard in my entire life.  Sleepless nights, lost weekends, and seemingly endless hours of work were not helped by my procrastination but seem to be endemic to course development.  I learned that it takes a great deal of blood, sweat, and tears to make a course work.

I am still not entirely sold on the need to have the entire course completed ahead of time – though who am I to argue with the experts?  I do know that having it done (mostly) gives me a sense of control and feeling that if and when I need to change and update things, I have an established framework that makes sense.  In other words, modifications can be done in a controlled setting.  As Alex once told me (I’m paraphrasing here)  you need to plan for spontaneity.  I wasn’t quite sure what she meant at the time but I’m beginning to get it. 

The other thing I’ve learned, both from the assigned article, and from experience is the critical importance of instruction design.  I literally went through about 10 drafts of the outlining, structure, even visual design of my course.  Each time, I tried to eliminate things that would be potentially confusing or unclear.  In fact, Shea et al. note that, “students that reported high levels of instructional design and organization also tended to report high levels of satisfaction and learning.”  Intuitively, as I placed each component of the course, I felt the constant need to go back and think about structure and design.   This is clearly where planning the entire course ahead of time does help.

In terms of my course, there are a few things I’d like to spruce up.  I want to improve the flow of navigation.  There are a number of instances where I want to add links to things like rubrics or course guides for my students’ reference.  In other words, the rubrics exist, there is just too much moving about to get to them.  I still hope to improve on that.  I also continue to find typos, strange formatting quirks, and even the occasional broken link that I want to get fixed.  As of right now, I would say that I am about 85% happy with my work.  But as my old baseball coach used to say – even gems need polish. (4)