Marshall Vandruff

Online teaching demands specific communication skills. 

These skills have named categories (affective, tentative, cohesive, and more) which when used in appropriate sequence (attention, relevance, confidence...), overcome the limitations of online communication. 

Starting to see why Hi-Tech requires Hi-Touch. It's a computer. Part of a teacher's job is to make it feel less like a computer, more like a real person here, teaching you. 

This is all about relationships. Good ones do good in the long run. 

I've used the Client/Supplier model most of my teaching career, and believe in it. Trouble happens when a student can't play the role of client, or doesn't know how to. The "fear of the grade" changes the dynamic to see the teacher as a boss. 

But I think for attitude, it is best to see my role as The Supplier. Winning over the client. Speaking truth to the client via the "play money" of a grade. 

From 2010 – 2014 I made my living teaching online, and loved it in all sorts of ways but hated the failing technology that all the planning in the world could not overcome. Students made cartoons of me cursing the technology. By 2016 I gave up on it in frustration. 

After a four-year hiatus, it is now so much better!

What I got from this portion of the course is that this new medium may not meet old expectations, not only of teachers, but students. For teachers, lots of planning, but also giving students a vision that this will be… >>>

This is my first "emotive response" to these courses so far. This content is so timely in my life! After 36 years of teaching in college and ten online, my recent struggle has been how to use this new medium to its very best and I feel that this is a load of wisdom toward that.

Active learning:

Offer the challenge, and let the students do the work.

Engage.

Call, and elicit response.

Demo, and allow students to ape and evolve. 

My takeaway so far:

Guide them into doing what they are there to do. It may look like you're… >>>

I've often spent 12–20 hours on my 2-3 page syllabi, making it as concise and clear as possible, but only now have I realized that color-coding, which I've used often, doesn't help everyone...

I realize that my supervisors have known more about the laws than I have. This gave me some context for the history of how we accommodate. 

All sorts of difficult issues including ones I have not acknowledged. This prompts me to understand rather than judge quickly.

Everybody gets graded - the student, the teacher, the course, the school... Each affects the others, and gets assessed by more than one source of evaluation and feedback. 

Objectives Clear.

Criteria Clear.

Assessment Fair because it's based on the Rubric with the clear Obectives and Criteria.