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“After creating your blog, you will then make your first reflection entry. Based on the readings during Module 1, please select two questions to answer from below. Write your answers and reflections on your blog.”
1. Define online teaching and learning.
A good starting point for formulating a definition of
online teaching and learning would be to consult Lisa Dawley’s The Tools
for Successful Online Teaching (2007). As Dawley (2007) states in the
first chapter, “a successful online teacher is one who promotes the
achievement of learning objectives by facilitating engagement to empower
students as life-long learners” (p. 4). Later in the chapter, Dawley
focuses on the term “engagement” and affirms that it “is a critical
component to keep students online and learning” (p. 5).
I began to wonder, what does it mean to be “engaged,”
exactly? During her exploration of the term, Dawley (2007) states the
student must interact with people in the course as they construct
knowledge, that they should assume more responsibility for their own
learning as they continue through the course, and that the student
should “become empowered to continually seek out new information and
learning” (p. 5). With my own experiences learning online – from
learning computer programming skills to dissecting English literature – I
found myself nodding in agreement, especially in terms of feeling
empowered to seek out more information. In many cases, the courses I
took were perfect beginnings to a continual learning process that
extended for months or years beyond the course.
This last point, that students should continually seek out
new information, is connected to another familiar term used in her
definition of a successful online teacher: “Life-long Learners.” Dawley
(2007) mentions that a successful online teacher will create a learning
environment that includes “feedback, interaction, and content, and
promote self-learning, as well as an understanding of learning styles”
(p. 6). Therefore, I think the onus is put on the instructor to not only
facilitate communication in the course, but to also provide feedback
and otherwise interact with his or her students as a way of monitoring
and providing guidance.
Although I am still formulating my definition, I understand
a student will learn well online if the learning environment is
conducive to peer interaction and provides engaging material and plenty
of resources for further inquiry.
2. Discuss 2 – 3 critical issues you discovered in the SLOAN-C report entitled, Changing Course (2012) link.
Issue 1: “Does it take more faculty time and effort to teach online?” (Sloan-C, p.5)
According to earlier findings of the Sloan-C Report (2013),
“teaching an online course requires more time and effort from faculty
than teaching a face-to-face course” (pg. 5). What is interesting is
that over the past six years of findings published in the report, the
“perception of academic leaders of the relative effort for faculty to
teach an online course has shown little change over the past six years”,
moving by a marginal increase of 3.2 percent (Sloan-C, p. 5) for a
total of 44.6 percent of those surveyed agreeing that it takes more time
and effort (Sloan-C, p. 38). The report states only in private
for-profit institutions did the perception of difficulty drop, which it
did by a mere 7.4 percent (Sloan-C, p. 5).
Here is the problem. When one considers the increase in
“students taking at least one online course increased by over 570,000 to
a news total of 6.7 million” with a growth rate of 9.3 percent
(Sloan-C, p. 4), and that academic leaders are slow to change their
perceptions about how much more effort it can take to teach an online
course, we will have an academic environment that is potentially
frustrating for both administration and faculty. If the academic leaders
consider online courses to be as time consuming (or less) to teach as
face-to-face courses, and faculty are required to teach more online
courses, the academic leaders’ expectations for the number of courses
their faculty should teach may be too high. If an instructor cannot
devote enough time to their students’ learning in the course, the
quality of that learning experience may degrade.
This potential problem seems easily solved. The first step
is addressing the misconception. It is possible that some academic
leaders view an online course as a way to package the class into a
product that can be consumed by students with less direct real-time
oversight of the learning process by the instructor. Therefore, an
online course would require less time and effort from faculty. Through
open dialog with online teaching faculty, academic leaders would learn
about the differences in both learning environments. Once the
differences are understood, new expectations could be developed and the
tension between leaders and faculty would hopefully ameliorate.
Issue 2: Belief that lower retention rates in online courses are a barrier to the growth of online instruction
Also noted in the report is that the lower rates of
retention in online courses is a “continuing concern among academic
leaders at all types of institutions (Sloan-C, p. 30)”. In 2007, 56.1
percent of chief academic officers reported that the low rates were an
“important” or “very important” barrier to the growth of online
instruction; that rate has since climbed to 73.5 percent in 2012
(Sloan-C, p. 30).
Retention rates are understandably important to chief
academic leaders. An institution strives to provide programs of study
that students complete in a reasonable time frame. If students have a
more difficult time completing an online course than its face-to-face
“cousin,” this will certainly influence plans to increase online
instruction at the institution. As more students enroll in online
courses – a growth rate of 9.3 percent – the need for addressing the
issue of retention will should simultaneously increase (Sloan-C, p. 4).
Until academic leaders provide solutions to the issue of retention, it’s
likely to continue to be a major barrier to the growth of online
instruction.
Sources
Sloan-C. (2013). Changing course: Ten years of tracking
online education in the united states, 2012. Babson Survey Research
Group and Quahog Research Group, LLC.
Dawley, L. (2007). The tools for successful online teaching. Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing.
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