Dallas' Online Teaching Blog

Online Elements

I've been blogging ideas attached to our course readings, but have not done a good job of discussing those readings in depth. I'm backtracking a bit, but I hope that the next few blogs will remedy that issue.

Many of the 'online' classes that I have seen, especially in the high school arena, are simply traditional courses with a syllabus, assignments, and lectures posted on a website much as the introduction of chapter 12 outlines. It is more of a cross between web enhanced and web augmented.

Discussion Boards.
I'll go back to lectures in a bit, but first wanted to address discussion boards. In my opinion the discussion board is the true strength of online learning. Ko and Rossen list the positive aspects of discussion boards in group interaction, discussion prompts, and the ability to communicate anonymously. There are negative sides as well. In John Suler's The Psychology of Cyberspace he mentions the affects of 'group think' as well as the dangers of giving students the black hole experience (Try the link. It is an interesting example of what happens if you don't manage your communication sites.

Testing Online
Online quizzes and tests seem to be a necessary evil. I see them used more in high school and undergraduate courses than in my graduate program. Here's my opinion: If you structure the discussion channels so that they require applied knowledge of the subject they will be a much stronger indicator of student knowledge. Quizzes are a way for instructor to apply an ordinal number for a gradebook. I'll step down from the soapbox now. On page 251 Ko and Rossen mention Hot Potatoes. I've used this piece of software extensively because of it's ability to integrate multimedia into tests. It's great for students with learning difficulties and visual or kinesthetic learners. (It is also a cool way to give a spelling test.)

Web Based Exercises
I agree with Ko and Rossen about the need to act as a stong facilitator when using the web in a classroom environment or online course. Verifying links is crucial to this process. One technique is to design your pages in Dreamweaver and then post them to your LMS. Dreamweaver has an automated process that verifies all the links. It saves a ton of time when you have 30 or 40 links in a unit. The treasure hunt approach is definately a disaster. I try to give students a "Useful Resources" link that has sources that are relevent and not part of the school's blocking policy.

Lecture.
I saved this topic for last because it is a source of great irritation for me. I am not an auditory learner. If you read to me I will mentally drift into a coma. I need visuals. Ko and Rossen hit the nail on the head: "...posting lecture notes online helps some but not all students." It does have to do with learning styles. My ideal would be lecture notes in the syllabus, a breeze presentation with the lecture one the screen and an instructor commentary playing in the background, and multimedia examples of practical applications. That most definately creates more initial work for the instructor which is a paradigm that I think we should discard. Initially setting up an online course is no more difficult or time consuming than initially setting up a traditional course that addresses the needs of differentiated learners (Corley. Differentiated Instruction. Adjusting to the needs of all learners.)

posted by Dallas Becker @ 3:41 PM