The student-instructor interaction is different in an online environment than F2F. If the student in an online course is instructed to read five chapters for a test next week this will not be effective. Most often the student can not obtain real-time feedback in an online environment. The opportunity to ask questions, hear their peers responses, and discuss the content is not present. The F2F course may need to develop new objectives such as analyze, interpret, or evaluate rather than list, state, and discuss. I have experienced several challenging classes as an online student and this most likely occurred because the origin, organization, orchestration, and assessment of outcomes was not performed or performed effectively.
I see. What was the subject matter and what were the poll prompts. I'd love to incorporate something like this but am not sure how to set up the question(s).
Course content in an online environment needs to be more explanatory since the students will not have the instructor there to explain how to use the material. There needs to be clear and concise instructions on what each portion of the content is for and how it will help the learner reach their goals of being successful.
Anitra,
I LOVE your alliteration! I think our "O's" are important part of teaching period, no mater the delivery.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
J.,
I have used it in a writing course showing nonverbal power. They had to vote on the message and its lack of effectiveness because of nonverbals.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
Muriel,
Great post. I provide a video at the beginning to show students the important parts of the course. It seems to work as it helps students develop a pattern.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
superb. gives me lots of ideas. thank you very much.
J.,
Glad to help. Hope you are able to share your successes and failures!
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
Most of both successes and failures have been due to engagement of the class. I am a lecturer, but I require students to participate in real-time in the F2F setting via myriad ways (questioning at the evaluation and synthesis levels, student-student interaction, flash quizzes, etc). It is very different in the online setting where engagement is not in real-time. Your polling idea is great for getting feedback/participation in a more structured time.
J.,
I am glad you are going to use it. It is so important that students engage with each other as well was with the instructor or we are just teaching a correspondence course and that is problematic.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
that is an awesome observation. i have never thought about it that way. if we are not engaging and EFFECTIVELY drawing the student out then, yeah, it is just a correspondence course. wow. revelation. btw, is it o.k. if i send that quote to our director of ed? also, in your opinion, how much of that interaction should the course grade depend on?
Course content created for a face-to-face course can appropriate for an online course, but the delivery must be modified. In a F2F there is a sense of immediacy, whereas online there is a delay in communications, i.e. discussions, commentary, feedback, and general discourse.
Another reason the F2F content may be inappropriate is the delivery methods, of assignments, lectures, and general information. So while the content may be the same, the way it is presented and the way we engage our students must be vastly different.
J.,
Well, that is the $1,000,000 question. Our institution is trying to determine attendance in an online course. The federal government also monitors this also and it can be costly if the "feds" start investigating about participation and engagement. It is a precarious situation.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
Stephanie,
You are right. It is the delivery that makes the difference. I find when I change my delivery for online it improves my f2f.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
that's something else i did not know (fed monitoring). i like to ask a lot of content questions. in your opinion, is there a break limit (for student involvement) to how much questioning we can effectively do for any given class, given that each class is different, of course?
J.,
I am not sure there is a ratio. They want to see student to student engagement. You can also make sure you have group work or other types of interaction that will help engagement.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
Face to Face content will likely have areas where the instructor will provide demonstrations for further clarification. It may also leave out a lot of the details posted in online courses due to the ability of F2F to utilize nonverbal behavior cues. Technology tends to miss the nonverbal communication element, and therefore more clarification is needed to assist students through their independent learning.
Michelle,
Youmake an important point about the need for detail. In the online environment assumptions can provide gaps in learning. It is important for us as instructors to be redundant in the learning content.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
There needs to be a higher level of engagement in online course content creation because students take on more of the responsibility of being active learners.
Hello,
Course content created for a face-to-face course can't be appropriate for an online course because the delivery methods would be different, so the course content would need to be altered in order to meet the needs on an online delivery method. Also, some assignments simply won't work as well in an online classroom because of the requirements of them, so this also needs to be a consideration.
Amanda
