Summary: I note some of the pitfalls and suggest improvements for online classrooms involving nontechnologists. Some useful online teaching tips via web site and weblog at bottom of this entry.
The "no face" teaching experience takes getting used to. Initially it can be compared to, say, swimming one hundred yards underwater with just my arms. I have been teaching graduate education courses for 32 years...and a mixture of traditional and online courses since 1990 (the first one using a bulletin board server on an early Mac). In those years I have seen considerable accomplishment by online learners. Learning that is comparable to, sometimes superior to, the same class delivered by traditional, everyone-in-same-classroom" methods. There have been extraordinary failures, however.
Background:
My clients are most often teachers, if not teachers are human service workers, administrators and counselors. Their common ground is their investment in human growth and development, possibly mental health . Their individual talents have to do with face-to-face communications and 'reading' people as well as subject matter. It is a rare one of my clients who is deeply invested in technology. These days most bring word processing, beginner level web browsing and, more rarely, file transfer skills to the classroom. Often undergraduates are more technologically literate than 30+ graduates who are coming back for a graduate credential or degree.
Sources of failure:
Some thoughts:
Give frequent and easy initial assignments. Ease must involve both substantive and technical requirements of the assignments. This will establish doability and allow correction of errors while small and while moving attitude toward course into the territory of "can do". Establish direct communication habits, e.g., require students to critique self, instructor and technology fairly frequently, particularly in first 3-5 exercises. This will allow timely corrections of misunderstandings of substance and pre-frustration adjustments of technology ; in this set of quick high-ownership exchanges, ownership, on the part of student, and responsiveness on part of teacher put class on more successful path. Websites addressing online learning issues:
American Psychological Society's Online Teaching Tips Margaret Driscoll's (2000) Ten Things We Know About Teaching Online Ray Schroder's Online Learning Weblog
