Dallas' Online Teaching Blog

Teaching Online

2006-04-11T18:45:00.000-07:00

I have a few observations for those of you looking at the field of online teaching.

Preparation time for an online class is double because there isn't any room to 'wing it.'
Students new to technology have to be forced to communicate in the beginning.
Large projects need milestones so that you can ensure everyone in on the right path.
Half your class will turn things in at the last minute so that they can see everyone elses work.
You need to establish guidelines in how you name posts in a discussion board; otherwise you have a string of 20 comments titled "re: initial comment"
You will have to attempt to record a lesson at least 6 times before you get it right (this is if you have editing cababilities.) In breeze you are just screwed.
You have to be very specific about what constitutes communication, especially in an entry level course. Otherwise the only comment you get is "I agree. Great job!"

Chapter 11: The pot and the Kettle.

2006-03-26T09:12:00.000-08:00

As I read chapter 11 I consantly found myself trying to classify people. I take 2 classes with Dr. Dawley which really exacerbates these issues. (I probably wouldn't do this again for that reason.) I feel like I am the "Noisy" student because I have a lot of questions times 2 classes. Every time the instructor opens up her e-mail I can see her saying, "Oh God, what is it now..."
I don't know if everyone feels as self conscious about communicating with a professor, but it must scare the heck out of college freshman in their first online class. I don't have a solution for this.
My second problem is that I fit a group not found in Ko and Rossen. I'm the "amiable student who hasn't kept up." In one of the classes we were given a literature review assignment. It was a 4-6 page paper which for me usually means 4-6 hours. Reality was about 3 times that. The real issue was that the first draft was to be posted in a peer group area. When the first person actually posted theirs up it didn't look anything like mine. It didn't even look like the same assignment. I went back and reread all of the assigned text to discover that I really didn't have a clue what I was doing. I was stuck:

If I send the instructor an email at this point and say "I'm lost" it makes me look like "the procrastinator" who didn't do the work and let their group down. Out of the question.
If I leave my original draft and then try to justify it by explaining what I thought was important in the text I look like the mutineer. (After rereading the assigned text I don't know how I came to my original concept of what a literature review was.)

By this time I was so ridiculously frustrated, (and now behind in both classes) that I just sent the instructor an e-mail saying, "My draft was crap. I'm going to start over with a more useful idea that I actually have need of here at work." I also posted a water cooler thread about how much I hate APA (A little mutineer coming out.) At that point I went from being the "Would like to have an A" student to the "Lets just get it over with" student. I remember feeling like I was standing at the bottom of a mountain with a shovel in my hand.

My distance ed life lesson from this is that I didn't know what my classmates were thinking and that mattered to me. The instructor kept publicly saying "Don't get frustrated," but I still had the impression that everyone else was on top of this. The instructor did everything according to Ko and Rossen's collaboration guidelines. She also followed Palloff and Pratt's chapter 3 participation challenges checklist. It didn't have anything to do with the instructor or the lesson. She did everything right. Still, as I student I feel as if I have failed (maybe Ko and Rossen need to add a "Whiny Depressed Student" section.) I don't have a solution for this either.

In completing my now infamous literature review I learned that it is not unusual for the dropout rate on distance courses to be 50% (The Chronicle of Higher Education.) I thought that was crazy until I went through this semester. Once you get behind it is difficult to catch up and difficult to communicate what is going on without feeling very insecure (and I'm not an insecure person.) Because of the nature of competition in online courses I put too much pressure on myself. I would have probably dropped these classes if it had been undergraduate work. Now I just have to figure out how to fix it.

Preparing for Distance Ed.

2006-03-26T08:45:00.000-08:00

It's difficult for me to go back and remember what it was like the first time I experienced an online course. With that being said I tend to lean on best practices of the instructors I have had in the past.
Initial Encounter
Ko and Rossen spend a lot of copy talking about technical issues. Since every instructor uses different terminology communication could either take place in 'collaboration,' 'discussion,' 'group pages,' or just about anywhere. The best approach to this that I have seen is to send out an initial email to all students registered in the class explaining what to expect, basics of the course, and where to get help. (It kills me when the help procedures are located within the LMS. It's like your ISP only providing help online: If I could get online I wouldn't need help!)
Learning Styles
I'll blog this section later because it has been one of the 'grand epiphanies' for me in this course. The main idea is that asynchronous communication can leave a lot of students lost. I don't agree with Ko and Rossen that this is a learning style issue, at least not in the sense of traditional education. I do agree that it is a problem.
Orientation
This is the most important piece. You have to answer the question "What is expected of me and how will it be measured?" I've found that instructors tend to make this very general when it probably should be more specific. The Levenburg example in the book talks about asynchronous communication and then goes on to say that "most students access their e-mail five to seven times a week." Is that daily? Every three days? Will I fail the course if I have a week where I can't be online. If the expectation is 10 hours per week does that mean 2 hours a night, or will their be assignments that require 5 and 6 hour blocks of time? What does the author mean by "cutting edge" technology? My computer is 2 years old. I would rather see some examples. From Ko and Rossen p. 190 Don't just use the terminology 'asynchronously (time-and location-shifts.) If your students don't understand and googe the term asynchronous they are going to get 30,000 sites about advanced computer programming. Instead give them an example from a previous class or send them to e-learnspace. They have a great set of tools about asynchronous communication and how to use it.............

Using Multimedia: Adaptive Technology

2006-03-25T19:07:00.000-08:00

I wanted to blog one thing in chapter 7 of Ko and Rossen. A great deal of attention is being spent on Multimedia and it's purpose in distance education. I wanted to add one thing to the 'When to Use Multimedia' section. As an educator you have to be atuned to your students learning styles. Auditory learners may find audio clips more valuable than lecture notes for example.
I also wanted to talk about adaptive technology. One of the dangers of multimedia is forgetting about ADA requirements. It really isn't that difficult to add alternative text, voiceovers, and media descriptions to a website. I'll post the link to an ADA website here. They have a ton of helpful hints as well as a list of the requirements. Here's the link: ADA

Grasping Groups

2006-03-25T18:36:00.000-08:00

I'm back online! My home computer decided to blow up and my work blocks blogger (along with everything else.)

My first topic is group work from Chapter 6 in Ko & Rossen. The initial group forming activity is an introduction. My favorite so far was an instructor who asked us to submit a powerpoint presentation with pictures discussing our favorite things in life. Of course the class was fairly small, but it really helped set the tone.
Size and Duration of Groups.
I'm still waffling over the proper size and duration of groups. Unlike Palloff and Pratt my experience with Dyads has been a disaster. Too many of the pairs are dysfunctional. My best experiences have been in groups of four. In terms of duration I don't agree that the groups should last the duration of the course (at least not in graduate courses.) I prefer to experience as many different skill sets as possible. I think working adults adapt to new groups faster as a matter of experience. It also gives you more than one experience per course.
Group Roles.
I prefer assigned roles. In other classes where large projects were introduced the instructor either assigned specific tasks or listed tasks and had the group decide on roles. It helps shorten the formative period.
Collaboration Happens.
Collaboration has to be encouraged and sometimes required depending on the makeup of the class. The Palloff and Pratt methodology of set the stage, model, guide, and evaluate may even require the addition of the word 'push.' It seems like the younger students are the more active the instructors role. The problem is that forced collaboration is inversely proportional to constructivist learning (Garrison 2004.) It goes back to the old Dewey papers from 1933 talking about how we think. To fully take advantage of the collaborative environment students have to be allowed to practice formative highly ordered thought.

To Convert or Not. That is the Question.

2006-03-11T16:52:00.000-08:00

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.

I had one thing in Chapter 3 of Ko and Rossen that I felt strongly enough about to blog. On page 48 there is an "Important" paragraph at the top of the page that says,

"The move to an online format offers you opportunities to
try out new methods and approaches. Preserving the quality of your course
need not mean finding an exact translation of what you've always done in the
past."

In both of the examples of course conversion at the beginning of the chapter the instructor started off with what they knew of traditional teaching, (Reach read and composed questions, Yendell offered lecture and asked for questions.) Both have since converted to a model where more of the learning takes place through discussion between peers and through FAQ boards. In Reach's opinion "Requiring her students to discuss online assignments online engendered a sense of community that reduced isolation many students would have felt working entirely on their own."
I feel that the best approach is to step outside the traditional classroom paradigm and look at the world from the eyes of your students. Too much focus is spent on available technology and what is the 'latest' device. In an article from Changing Pedagogy: Does the Introduction of Networked Learning Have an Impact on Teaching? the authors make the following comment:

There is no doubt a long way to go before active learning in e-environments
is standard majority practice across higher education but clearly advances are
being made. However, it seems to us that teachers and their students, not the
technology, should of necessity be at the centre of the process. They are the
experts on learning and the technology is no more than a tool, albeit a powerful
and exciting one with masses of potential. It is how teachers use it that will
bring ultimate improvement and success.

Most students starting college today have a great deal of experience with online communication and internet based research. It may not be at the collegiate level, but this shouldn't be a stumbling block. What they haven't experienced is the traditional 'lecture, test, lecture, test.....' classroom. They are used to someone actually paying attention to whether or not they complete an assignment and for the most part are used to having a personal relationship with their instructor. That breaks down in traditional large universities where classes are in the hundreds.
Ko and Rossen emphasize that all design decisions should consider learning objectives and how the design elements direct learning outcomes toward those objectives. There is a growing group of educators who feel that traditional lecture style courses don't meet this gold standard. Maybe we need to forget about traditional paradigms and ask the question "What would the course look like if the students designed it?"

Online Elements

2006-03-11T15:41:00.000-08:00

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.)

Are all online students created equally?

2006-03-04T21:31:00.000-08:00

I've spent the better part of the last month trying to figure out where hybrid courses fit into my schools. Will they work at the high school level? Why or why not? Wouldn't a hybrid be a perfect fit for an elementary GT course. Most of the research out there points to the fact that these initiatives would be difficult because these students are not all 'self-directed.' I told you that in order to tell you this: Maybe it isn't the students who have the problem. Maybe it is the way in which the material is presented. The University of Central Florida offers a tremendous amount of information about blended (Hybrid) courses. I found their presentation on Blended Learning and Generations particularly interesting (http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/%7Erite/Presentations/Online%20blended%20generations%20presentation.ppt) If you look carefully at how many of our hybrid courses are constructed they seem to be targeting generation X. Millenials wouldn't be interested in constructed learning. They would have very little experience with traditional classroom methods so why attempt to emulate them? Pundits would argue that this isn't preparing student's for the real world. I wonder we Gen Xers realize that it isn't our world they need to fit into anymore?

Kids at the Forum

2006-02-28T23:32:00.000-08:00

I've been dealing with a pressing issue that I want to dump into this blog. A few weeks ago I was remotely monitoring a student downloading music (a big no no) when I saw them pop up a site called 'Xanga.' For my fellow ostriches Xanga is on online forum that markets to teenagers. I watched this student start to go through pages belonging to our junior high girls. Virtually every one of them had a picture, name, and a partial address. Some had cell phone number, and one even had a scan of their state ID card (definately not one of our gifted students.) When I looked into this I found hundreds of websites telling stories of predators using these things to find kids. I was shocked at both the enormity of the problem as well as my own ignorance. My question is this: How do we separate the legitimacy of things such as hybrid courses, discussion boards, and this blog with the issues of safety?
Next week I'm teaching a course in internet safety. I've done it many time before dealing with pornography and identity theft, but this time I will be adding communication. I guess I'll have to take my picture and profile down. What's good for the goose definately isn't good for the goslets. Here's a great resource link if you have kids:
http://www.childsafetyfaq.com/

Hybrid learning - The second coming

2006-02-28T23:27:00.000-08:00

After reading through several articles about Hybrid Learning I came across one that really caught my eye. It did so because it had the best list of 'reasons to move toward hybrid learning' that I had ever seen. I never thought about Hybrid classes being so writing intensive that they are defacto writing courses. I also never thought about them being the solution to the divide between juvenile electronic communication and business electronic communication. It definately makes me want to rethink my plans to do pure online courses and evaluate the economics of doing hybrids instead. This is one that is worth reading.

http://courses.durhamtech.edu/tlc/www/html/Special_Feature/hybridclasses.htm

Maybe we should look around for a better educational model.

2006-02-20T20:51:00.000-08:00

I was looking for an article on a distance education high school in Finland when I came across this piece. The gest of the article is a comparison between the educational advancements of two European Union (EU) countries: Finland and Italy. Since the EU formed a cooperative aimed at increasing technology in education called the e-education forum is has been trying to bring about a balance among member countries. The problem is that no implementation guidelines were ever set; thus each country was free to pursue the problem of educational technology on its own. Italy, who had previously been well known for having the best schools in Europe throughout most of the 60's and 70's, chose a very different approach to that of Finland. Here is an excerpt:

For example, the development of global connection and distance learning are primary objectives for the Finnish, who strive to offer the same possibilities in communication and learning to the inhabitants of rural areas or residents of foreign countries. The Italians, on the other hand, give priority to updating infrastructures and the teaching staff to new technologies.

The Italian approach sounds eerily similar to that of the United States. Too much bureaucracy and concern for antiquated approaches. The Finns simply threw out preconceived notions of curriculum and based their standards on the country's economic reality. The article is very interesting. Here's the link: http://www.e.finland.fi/netcomm/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=24566

Twelve Important Questions to Answer Before You Offer a Web Based Curriculum

2006-02-14T20:50:00.000-08:00

Since I am in the process of building a distance education I thought this article from the Online Journal of Distance Education Administration was appropriate. I think the most interesting thing is that the article was published in the summer of 2001 which was the height of the "Oh my God online education will ruin our colleges scare. Since not all of the sections are extremely relevant today I'll discuss only a few. Rather than a running commentary I will list the twelve questions with discussion.

Will the Web curriculum offered be congruent with the institution’s mission and strategy?
Do you have administrative support?
Are there institutional obstacles to adopting a Web curriculum?
Are the students ready to handle the self discipline required? This question still plagues us today. I've read conflicting studies about the drop rate on distance ed courses but I know that it is twice as high in undergraduate courses as compared to graduate.
How will you handle intellectual property issues?
I wonder if this is actually an issue any more?
How will you compensate instructors for offering or administering Web courses?
Since theoretically you could have a very small class or a huge class the traditional measures of what constitutes a course no longer apply. I wonder how universities handle this now?
Do you have clear, well-defined criteria for selecting the classes to be offered through the Web?
What facilities or capabilities are available to assist in the preparation and delivery of course materials?
What methods will be used to deliver class content?
How will student progress be assessed?
The author specifically discusses the paranoia associated with "It is difficult if not impossible to reliably ascertain a participant’s identity when communicating over the Internet."
Do your students have the skills necessary to use the Web and participate in class?
Today the question is "Do the students have a computer with high speed internet access." I think schools and universities have done a moderately good job of preparing most students for the web.
Where will the class materials be maintained?

You can read the whole article at: http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/summer42/mcalister42.html

What the heck is a Wiki?

2006-02-14T20:43:00.000-08:00

Since enrolling in this course my ego has taken a considerable beating. In my daily life I am considered the king geek. Any question in the realm of technology is mere child's play. In this course I am somewhat of a lesser geek, possibly a serf-geek or peon-geek. As I listen to my peers I hear words such as Avatar and Wiki. I feel like a cobol programmer at a .net users group (geek humor.) To educate myself I googled "What the heck is a Wiki." The websites found ranged anywhere from a theoretical physics display to an online encyclopedia. I did find one site that explained it rather well. It had examples and actual code available for download. For the rest of you simple-geeks here is the definition of a wiki along with the URL to actually see one:

'Wiki' is a composition system; it's a discussion medium; it's a repository; it's a mail system; it's a tool for collaboration; it's a cult. Really, we don't know quite what it is, but it's a fun way of communicating asynchronously across the network.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki

Should we strive to become High-Tech Campuses?

2006-02-12T06:39:00.000-08:00

I wonder if it makes sense for every educational institution to strive to achieve the High-tech status mentioned in chapter 2 of the Ko and Rossen book. I'm beginning to believe that focusing on good online pedagogy and student management skills is more important in the beginning than trying to buy the latest and greatest software. The "if you build it they will come" theory has been very ineffective in my career. I think that we rate too many programs based on their technology and not their teaching. Don't get me wrong. I do believe in consistent Learning Management Systems. Students need a comfortable familiar environment to learn in. My issue comes with the integration of high bandwidth technologies such as streaming media. A poor quality video of an instructor lecturing in front of a whiteboard defeats the spirit of good andragogy. Multisession interactive video chats are extremely difficult to implement, but they do have a nice 'wow' factor when the administration sees it at a conference. The question is will anyone be willing to go through the pain to use it. Most instructors are already taxed. I am attaching a link to a study that discusses this point. You may have to be patient as the site seems to go up and down quite a bit.
http://technologysource.org/article/technological_minimalism_in_distance_education/

National Tech Plan and "e-learning?"

2006-02-12T06:11:00.000-08:00

I was reading through a blog on the national education technology plan and wanted to post an excerpt here. The national plan basically has a very vague reference to distance education (e-learning, which is a very poor choice of terminology in light of all the systems out there that proclaim themselves as 'e-learning suites." ) Here is a pretty interesting point of view.

"Supporting e-Learning" - Are we really thinking that e-Learning is going to provide meaningful educational experiences for kids? I take on-line grad courses in order to efficiently get through my degree. I have all of the independent learning skills necessary to manage that situation. Does your typical kid? I think there is a place for this but there is a very small percentage of kids who have the situation necessary to meaningfully learn in this way. (ie- AP Mandarin Chineese class for which one instructor exists in a 500-mile radius) Take a second to think of three of your most meaningful educational experiences. Could they have been easily encapsulated into an e-learning experience? Is the teacher stupid!

You can view the whole article here: http://edtechnot.blogspot.com/2005/10/national-ed-tech-plan-action-steps.html

Chapter 2: Classifying Distance Ed courses?

2006-02-12T05:55:00.000-08:00

In reading through the online teaching sections I was intrigued by the classifications of low-tech, mid-tech, and high-tech. I wonder if any institution is purely one of the other. Between the students, teaching staff, and technology group you may find yourself in three different places. In my case we are a high-tech institution with low-tech teachers and a mid-tech student body.
There are a lot of arguments as to how this can happen. Most people blame it on the teachers. The general consensus is that older teachers are technophobes unwilling to try new technologies. I'll attach link to a an article discussing this point of view. It comes from the Edtechnot.com website which tends to be the dissenting voice in terms of every educational policy unleashed on the world.

http://www.edtechnot.com/notarticle1201.html

Am I a Pragmatic?

2006-02-06T17:41:00.000-08:00

In my graduate studies I have offically discovered that I am a pragmatic, which doesn't sound like a very nice thing to be . I decided to look into the whole movement toward pragmatism so I went to my old friend google and typed in "Am I a pragmatic." This led to a rather strange assortment of sites such as "The Ubiquitous Wookie"(http://www.theubiquitouswookiee.com/) and "Spamroll.com" which I won't provide a link to because it has way too many references to the Kama Sutra. The dictionary officially defines a pragmatic as:

pragmatic
A
adjective
1
matter-of-fact, pragmatic, pragmatical

concerned with practical matters; "a matter-of-fact (or pragmatic) approach to the problem"; "a matter-of-fact account of the trip"
2
hardheaded, hard-nosed, practical, pragmatic

guided by practical experience and observation rather than theory; "a hardheaded appraisal of our position"; "a hard-nosed labor leader"; "completely practical in his approach to business"; "not ideology but pragmatic politics"
3
pragmatic, pragmatical

of or concerning the theory of pragmatism.

Either I am completely lost as to what it means to be a pragmatist or this dictionary needs to be updated.

Great text creations...

2006-02-06T12:56:00.000-08:00

I was at a conference taking a class on designing online courses and came across a couple of links that I had never used. If you are looking for a great place to get very cool text in formats that are not webenabled these are the sites. I've found this very useful in places that I want to post an e-mail that I don't want scraped from the website. It also creates text in scaleable .png files that are free and can be used anywhere. Here are the links:
http://www.flamingtext.com
http://www.cooltext.com
http://www.coolarchive.com

I was hoping we would finally get a national technology test.

2006-02-02T19:42:00.000-08:00

I was reading MSNBC and saw a note about a new test to evaluate technology literacy in high school students. Apparently this thing is created and administered by the same folk who gave us such classic hits as the SAT, SATII, and Online writing evaluator. I would love to take this thing and see what kind of score I could make. It couldn't be any worse than my SAT's.
I'll attach the MSNBC link, but since these things tend to vanish the test is called The ICT Literacy Assessment.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11150273/

Online courses required....

2006-01-31T20:21:00.000-08:00

While searching for reference articles in my assignment I came across this webpage basically saying that the Michigan State Board of Education was considering requiring students to take at least one online offering. http://chronicle.com/free/2005/12/2005121301t.htm What a great idea. Not because I am in the field, but because I think that the self directed model is so difficult to create in a traditional classroom. This would at least give every student a taste of a very different learning environment. It may even spur some kids into taking college courses that would have not been plausible for them in a traditional college. This isn't part of the assignment, I just thought that it was a cool idea and wanted to share.

Online Course Standards...

2006-01-31T20:19:00.000-08:00

The national education association publishes a document outlining standards for online courses. http://www.nea.org/technology/images/02onlinecourses.pdf I found it curious that the checklist for teacher quality mentions aspects such as “appropriate feedback” and “appropriate use on online voice.” It never says anything about technical skills or qualifications which are probably the things that scare most traditional classroom teachers away from online offerings. The site also offers a pretty strong checklist to determine student qualifications and key success predictors. While this was done with High School students in mind, I don’t see too many things that wouldn’t translate into any good online course standard.

The recent boom in online courses....

2006-01-31T20:06:00.000-08:00

The recent boom in online learning benefits non-traditional middle aged career minded people as well as the economy in general. Higher education organizations are fighting over dollars for certifications, professional development, and job training that can be accomplished by working individuals. In Gene Maeroff’s column The Online Learning Boom he notes that “Some of the shrewdest, profit-oriented education entrepreneurs have, in the best tradition of commerce, coalesced around these career-oriented, professional-based courses tied most tightly to the needs of employers.” (http://www.highereducation.org/crosstalk/ct0203/voices0203-online.shtml) This highly mobile workforce transfers jobs and dollars based on needs and critical shortages. Workers are no longer stuck in a dead end job with no future.

Successful online environments:

2006-01-31T19:52:00.000-08:00

The Australian flexible framework project classifies successful online facilitation programs should: “engage, guide and motivate learners, and provide a safe and conducive environment for learning and communication exchange for all learners regardless of their prior experience and predisposition.”(http://pre2005.flexiblelearning.net.au/guides/facilitation.html) That seems like a mighty task even for a traditional instructor. In my experience the most difficult part comes in dealing with prior experience and predisposition. There are so many different learning styles that what engages one student may be of little or no importance to the next. I’ve found that online learning is still new enough that students come with a sense of excitement and enthusiasm. Good programs maintain it.

Welcome...................

2006-01-26T16:16:00.000-08:00

This is my first forced blog. Feel free to pass on any nuggets or gems. You never know what someone might find useful. I'll start you off with a picture of one Wicked Ugly Cat.