Get Your Students Hired
I disagree. This assumes: A. the design is perfect; B. the subject matter does not change. Unfortunately, neither is true.
I have designed both online and face to face courses. I have to say that the time invested to developing online courses is more than the time required to develop the same course for a traditional classroom delivery. All aspects of the online course have to be a whole lot more complete even before the course begins. The presence of a face-to-face instructor helps if something goes wrong/there is error in the sequencing of the material for example. If it is an online class, that would cause so much panic on the part of the students. They wouldn't be sure about the rest of the course content. So extra caution needs to be taken in the online environment to ensure that all bugs/typos/errors are taken out before the course goes live.
I agree Kristin/Geerte. Once the course is developed and goes live online, your job is just to facilitate. So a lot of ground work needs to go into designing the course to make it as smooth as possible. If the time and effort is not invested into the initial design of the course, facilitating it could be a nightmare.
I disagree. The time involved to develop an online class is greater in comparison as everything you wish to convey to students must be placed in the course. The information must be presented in a logical way and must be complete to anticipate questions that a student might have. Additional resources need to be provided in advance to anticipate the need for such material rather than being able to respond to questions in a traditional class setting.
I agree Andrew -- in an online class you have to account for every detail. There is no "winging" it.
You cannot change the plan or go back over a topic and still meet the expectations of the class. In an on-ground class, you can redo a lecture, review a topic, even reschedule an exam or lab. Online, it is much more difficult to adjust. I can add extra chat sessions or find additional resources for students who let me know they did not quite understand, even let students revise an assignment, but taking the whole class through some modification just cannot happen. Students check the schedule at the start of the term or perhaps at the start of each week, and modifications after that are often missed.
Because of this, every thing has to be carefully planned out and pitfalls or hurdles determined in advance. This can be much more time consuming. In fact, it can take several terms to work the kinks out of even the best online class!
George,
I love the word accurate!! As online grows to across the oceans, we need to make sure the words we use mean the same in England, as they do here in the US.
Shelly Crider
Online courses require much more work than on ground courses in terms of the time that the instructor must put in in order to set up the course.
Kristin, I agree with your answer here. I have developed curriculum for online educational institutions and the process was very time consuming. For some of the courses I developed I had to also offer illustrations and interactive content. Writing and editing all aspects and, like you mention, anticipating questions and issues within assignments takes a lot of hard work and clarity in vision. Once the master shell of the course has been created, however, it becomes a matter of individualizing that course shell and teaching. That part of the process can be more time efficient because you can schedule this time as you desire and there is no commuting, dress code etc. The more often you teach the same course the faster you can get because all aspects of the course can be anticipated.
I disagree. It is my experience that the amount of time to develop an online course is much more. Online courses require more planning and a greater indepth attention to detail.
I disagree. It may actually take more time. Because communication is generally written, all information must be word processed and this can take more prep time than a verbal discussion. Additionally it must be thorough, concise, precise, accurate, and as detailed as needed.
I would disagree. When teaching on the ground, I can bring in things that happened just that day. For the online courses, I need to think of those things ahead of time and include in the course details.
Phyllis,
Thank you for mentioning maintaining the course. We need to be doing quality checks on our active classes for errors and active links all the time.
Shelly Crider
I disagree. The time invested in developing a quality online course can be more time consuming, depending on how much of the features text, audio, visuals, links, and supplemental materials an instructor would like to imbed in the design. In addition, links and other materials have to be monitored and constantly updated for relevance. Moreover, there has to be attention given to the fact that the design of the online course has to compensate for the lack of face-to–face interaction. I think designing and maintaining an online course is more time consuming than designing a traditional course in a physical setting.
The length of developing an online or offline course will depend on different factors. To develop a good online course depends on the learning management systems being used, prior experience, subject matter expert, training, support, templates, and technology. Once you have developed your offline or online course, you can keep reusing it until there is a need to revise it or if there is a new edition of the text book or if the primary text is changed, and program review recommends changes to the course. Thanks, Tom
robert,
Very good point. An instructor may be able to figure out how to create the online course, but it is apparent when an instructor or any developer is not comfortable with a certain technology.
Shelly Crider
I have to agree with you on this one. Being able to use random questions for the exams online is a great feature.
I would have to say it depends on several factors. The most important being the instructors’ level of experience with technology. I have degrees in both Business and IT so it was a breeze to convert an on-ground course to and online version. However, many of my colleges in the Business Department straggled because of their lack of technology experience.
I would disagree. I believe that most quality online courses would require more time to develop than for the same course in a traditional classroom setting. The courses would still need to cover the same topics and objectives. In an online environment, however, lectures and assignment guidelines need to be typed up in a clean and easy to read matter. This takes more time than it would to put a loose outline of notes together to be discussed in a traditional classroom setting. Additionally, moderation of discussion boards and managing questions from students will involve much more individual, typed responses to each student, as opposed to general, apply-to-everyone statements that may be made in a traditional classroom setting.
Caryn,
I like how you stated "teaching, done well" that is exactly what we want for the online students.
Shelly Crider
Disagree. Both require thoughful decision making in executing and deliverying the course material. the only difference is the enviroment. teaching, done well, in any environment requires the deliberate and intentional act of planning and engaging students.