Course Organization
In a traditional face-to-face course, the instructor often has complete control
over the organization of his/her own course. The online instructor is central
too, but not alone in setting up the organization and management of the course.
New administrative skills are necessary for the online instructor to coordinate
institutional, pedagogical, and technological demands.
Lesson Presentation
If you think an online course is simply a traditional face-to-face course replicated
on a computer screen, think again! Long lectures are not effective online.
A successful Internet course will reflect the communicative nature of the
online environment and incorporate resources from the outside world. For
example, the discussion element of an online course should be a major component
and links to related resources and support material should be a standard
feature in lesson presentation.
Class Communication
The instructor really has to work at promoting student discussions in an online
course, perhaps more so than in a face-to-face course. Facilitating and moderating
group discussions may be necessary, especially to help different student
subgroups blend together. One way is to incorporate collaborative learning
activities online by asking students to work together in small groups.
Time Allocation
Teaching an online course saves the instructor time which would otherwise be
spent in a classroom lecturing. However, it also requires time online devoted
to conferencing with the class and emailing individual students. The asynchronous
nature of an online course offers more flexibility in terms of interacting
with the course materials and participants both for the instructor and the
students.
Technical Support
Knowledge has become more and more specialized; no one seems to know it all
anymore. Technological personnel are experts with server software and hardware
but don’t know what you’re trying to teach, how you want to teach
it, or what your students know so far. Administrative personnel know who
the students are and how important their satisfaction is, but they don’t
know how to answer your technological questions. You’re in the middle
and will sometimes have either handle technology or administrative issues
yourself or know when to redirect questions to the proper resources.
"Open Entry" – "Open
Exit"
Online courses can be set up to allow "Open Entry" and "Open
Exit" in terms of when the class begins and when it ends. Web-based courses
depend on a real-live instructor and interaction with fellow students to create
valid educational experiences. Successful online courses should not be canned,
self-paced tutorials that deliberately eliminate contact with other human beings.
It is best to offer online courses over a full academic term. This allows students
time to cover and assimilate the material, collaborate with fellow students
learning the same topics at the same time, and work on projects and papers
together and independently at a reasonable rate. Spreading a course out over
ten to fifteen weeks also suits the many adult learners with other responsibilities
and only a limited amount of time to devote to their studies.
Laboratories
Web-based courses with required labs might be taken by traditional on-campus
students who have chosen to take an online course for the sake of its convenient
asynchronicity. These students can simply complete their lab assignments
on campus in the usual way. Students who are truly Distance Learners must
make other arrangements to fulfill their lab requirements. They may spend
one or two Saturdays on campus in specially scheduled all-day lab sessions,
do their lab work at a local high school or other nearby facility, or run
experiments at home using a lab kit provided by the college. The challenge
of running lab sessions for off-campus students is one that all forms of
Distance Education, whether correspondence, ITV, video, radio, etc., must
face. Creativity and flexibility are the keys to serving the needs of a geographically
dispersed student population.
Assessment
Assessment in should reflect the online medium in which the course is taught,
and traditional testing procedures may not be practical in an online environment.
Online test monitoring is still a technological challenge, however there
are strategies you can use to help minimize cheating online. For example
make exams open book and ask questions that require students to synthesize,
analyze, or apply information from the class discussions, lecture-presentations,
and text in order to solve problems or explain procedures. This forces students
to use higher order thinking skills and permits you to assess whether they
have learned the course material.
