Elias,
Very good point....the time to make the class is just this!
Shelly Crider
Amer,
Constantly reviewed!! Students change each term and links get sold each term...watch out for both!
Shelly Crider
Investing time in the online course can be just as much as an traditional delivery. I always try to create assignments to the lowest learning level student and sometimes get a friend who knows nothing about the content to read through it and make sure at least they can comprehend it. That way I cover myself and have less of a chance of questions popping up at the last minute.
I disagree. In fact, I served as SME for both online and face to face courses and I can say that time and effort to develop online course is more than it take to do for onground traditional course. In online learning model, we must ensure that assessment, readings, and etc. are developege carefully in order to compensate for the lack of face to face interaction. There is no one size fits all to develop online courses. Each course is different and that requires different strategies and effort to develop quality online course.
Hi Shelly and Class. I do not agree. It takes just as much time, if not more, for the online course as it does for a ground course. It is challenging in an online environment to make sure your lessons achieve a level of understanding with your students. In a ground class, you have the ability to have immediate give and take on what you are lecturing on. You can generally assess understanding by the level of interaction in the classroom. In an online environment, you have students from all different time zones and different challenges in their own lives, investing time to try to pass the course, but may be doing a minimum of work. A teacher needs to work toward engaging those students more and to try to ensure their understanding of the material to avoid frustration and failing.
Maureen
I teach both online and on ground and spend much more time developing the materials for an online course. The on ground classroom allows for a lot of spontaneous creativity on the part of the instructor while the online course demands, for the most part, preparation of the material in advance.
Don,
You can have extra resources available for on demand request from students.
Shelly Crider
I disagree, I think it requires much more time to develop a quality online course than a traditional classroom course. This is because you are not able to communicate directly with the students. They are learning on their own at their own pace. Due to this you must take extra precautions to make sure everything is described in an easy to understand/follow way.
I think it takes as much time or more to develop an online course as to prepare for in the class room lecture. I have been working on my new online EMR course and I'm still working on it as well as correcting many little things.
I disagree. There are many more components to an on line course.
Since I work for a broadcasting school,video content is written and developed by instructors.
Next, the videos must be dovetailed with online quiz content, to include helper quizzes.
On site lesson plans, material and exercises, in the case of my school which is mostly hands-on at the school site, must be developed and organized.
james,
Instructors do need to be flexible in their online classes and add material on the fly as students need.
Shelly Crider
I have also found creating an online course to be more time intensive and resource demanding because you do not have the ability to improvise as readily. On the ground courses I find have more freedom to respond to the status of the audience where as the online material typically needs to pre-suppose the audiences reaction to the material.
Jeremy,
It is always nice to add to your syllabus the fact that you might want to add material on the fly throughout the course and for students to check announcements frequently.
Shelly Crider
I think that the initial time it takes to develop an online course is greater than that of a traditional course. Simply putting the course content into the online platform takes more time than simply making copies or other common traditional classroom options. On the other hand, after some time, an online class has the potential to be more "streamlined" and thus take less time, since the skeleton of the course already exists and takes only the same kinds of content modification as that of the traditional course. One of the reasons I enjoy the online course structure is that development time becomes much more streamlined over time.
I am going to disagree with this statement. As an instructor who has not developed an online course, I would think the "first" time would be labor intensive even with a template available. Assessment of the course after the initial course was completed brings with it changes and addendums to those areas of poor performance or confusion. Continually assessing a course's success is something I do in the traditional classroom and would carry this into any online course I develop in the future.
Mark,
You are right on target here!! Over time it does become streamlined, but we still need to take the time to review!
Shelly Crider
Kelli,
Thank you for mentioning "continually assessing a course's success".......this is very important!!
Shelly Crider
I think it all depends on the course and the instructor's experience with the topic.
You do have to have more written documents for online courses in some cases because when teaching in traditional classroom some discussion may be spontaneous or off the cuff - but you still must have a general topic outline.
Online discussions require more control and organization. You also have to spend time getting the students involved so that takes time up front to think about what may interest them.
The most important thing to remember is that you must have some way to convey to the students the important concepts that you cover in a traditional lecture. If you typically provide some sort of demonstration - then that needs to be converted to be communicated effectively online. So you need to spend time up front thinking about the delivery method.
I disagree because I need to make it work for a situation when everyone is not together for all classes. I think the hardest thing I have had to do is shorten the lecture to a usable length. In my on the ground classes, the lecture was threaded through the presentation with breaks to do examples on the board or paused for questions. In an online environment, the lecture has to be short enough to provide salient points but not so long that it reads like a textbook.
I agree with this statement. One thing about on the ground classrooms is that the conversation can flow under my direction to a conclusion. I have to anticipate those detours for online since everyone is not present at the same time for every lecture.
