Journal 7

Online Professional
By Jim Vanides

I found this article particularly interesting because I am currently taking on online course for the first time. Jim Vanides describes his first experience in teaching an online class and how it forced him to rethink some teaching methods. His class, The Science of Sound, was offered to elementary school teachers. Like my own class it was asynchronous, but had assignments with deadlines and a definite beginning and end.
WebCT delivered courses have similar content, but are an entirely different experience for both teacher and learner. This caused Vanides to get creative with some of his instructional materials and techniques. The science notebooks he would normally use were redesigned into private discussion topics. Frequent assessment became even more important since the teacher could not see his students face to face to evaluate their progress. Venides came up with three assessment methods to overcome this problem: An open-ended mapping activity to evaluate the student’s connections between ideas, a weekly self-assessment, and the science notebook.
Most interesting was how the teacher’s main responsibility shifted from content delivery to the facilitation of discourse between students. This discourse now improved because of the greater time delay between responses and the need for clear and concise writing. What Venides also learned was that designing a Web based course takes time and the teaching itself takes time. Online teaching requires new skills which can be learned and once learned can make the online experience rewarding for everyone.

Question: What do I like most in an online class?

I like completing tasks on my own schedule. I like not having to go to campus.

Question: What do I like least about an online class?

I do not like discussion boards as a venue for communication. After these conversations I rarely feel that I connected with the other participants. Also, the old truism of out of sight out of mind, can sometimes apply. Sometimes I will go several days without even thinking of the class and then rush to get current.