End of part two: Facilitation of online courses

This section of the facilitation class was about pedagogy of online courses; building community between students and including the instructor; the managerial role of creating and managing a easily navigated and stimulating course; managing the course as it is occuring and the technical role that we must all keep up with.

The pedagogy of the online learning environment is fairly similar to what I would see as a graduate or post graduate f2f class. Principles of effective teaching has some really important points that must be included for a class to reach the learner and be an enriching experience. Firstly the learner must be understood so that the teacher tailors material and the class to their needs. Further than this though, the learners potential and need for growth must be acknowledged and promoted through a full learning experience. Secondly, learning is a construction of meaning individualized for each learner. This means that the course must facilitate all sorts of new thinking (critical, problem solving, creative) and not just one dimesion that the learner may excell in or be very comfortable to them. Constructivism will say that learners create and define their own meaning about a situation. Thirdly, inline with these principles, the learning environemnt created by the instructor must be challenging and stimulating, always asking that bit more of the person. Finally the online class depends on a learner teacher relationship that is positive, supportive, respectful, engaging and fair (thats my one!). Studnets do need to understand that the instructor has time and resouirce limitations. The online environemnt can be a slippery slope for a teacher when the class is large and the studetns keen. Individualizing relationships with studetns takes time and resources. From the teachers point of view these thin out as the class expands in size. So lets say that 20 is a maximum for one facilitator. The other principle is the wider environmental context that exists for the student. The virtual world must be in sync with the real one or application of learning is limited.

There are many roles that the instructor plays in an onlien class and I think that those were covered in the previous post. However one of the most important is the social role of building community. Personally I look forward to more success with this. My experience with a class that I teach from a distance at present has been somewhat jaded by my inability to build community between the students. My relationship with most of them is good, however, they don't want to gel--there are groups and they have been hard to break down. This week I finally detected plagerism from one student. The student copies other student's posts and modifies them as her own. So another role of the online instructor is detective. If the instructor is not observant about what is going on in the class they will not see the real reasons for the breakdown between students. Of course I could not build community between studetns who were aware that someone was cheating. Web ct 8 will have a plagersim detection function for the discussion boards. Good!

Setting the stage invloves getting all of those features up and ready to direct people around the material and course in a quick and orgaized way. Somes function that need attention are a visually engaging front/cover page; orientation to the course in several formats; topical outline and syllabus with required evaluation tasks set out clearly; a calendar with due dates and cues to where studetns are in the course; ways to contact the instructor; discussion boards for course questions, topical boards, and social interactions between students. I'd like to add course goals to that list as the first course had those linked to each module and it was great to just select the icon and self check if you are keeping up and on target. Probably hard to set up.

Managing the course is a time consuming task that requires perseverance, frequent checking in in check email and discussion boards; prompt responses to students questions; measured and timely responses to content posts; directing studetns to material as per their learning experience and need; and ongoing positive regard and support for students.

Soem difficult scenarios that can arise are prolific posting (encourage more student repsonding to students); studetns who don't know what is going on (refer them to the resources and skill them up in successful online student attributes); and plagerism (turnitin) or google text blocks.

Another role of the online teacher is the technically savvy person. From understanding just basic functions (like using frontpage, or writing html correctly, which I don't find that easy incidently!) to be fluent in using the full capabilities of the programs that are available to many of us (Google functions, Adobe photoshop, captivate potential). We had a great wimba session about current programs and dicsussion boards with some great resources posted. Three of the best that I have bookmarked were

internet4classrooms (Tutorials as application to classroom scenarios as to how to use them)

UCR extension (lots of basic and more complex tutorials)

Online journal of distance learning education

Well I have moved forward with what I have learned. I find this class a very well connected and supportive class. I feel like other students really want to help me solve my class challenges and I am very interested to hear about their classes, successes, ideas and challenges too. Being a student in this sort of class has to be the best way to learn how to teach one successfully. I believe this to be true and self evident!