Students who like to hide in the back of the lecture hall during class will have no such luck in some online courses. Professors are beginning to use what they call "the fishbowl" to add transparency to the learning process. Students get assigned to groups to complete projects, and all discussions and correspondence are required to take place on the online discussion boards—where the rest of the class is watching.
Rena Palloff, a faculty member in the program in educational leadership and change at the Fielding Graduate Institute, spoke at the League for Innovation in the Community College conference and said she uses the fishbowl with great success. While students are often apprehensive about being watched, she said, they usually get valuable feedback from their classmates.
"It’s a scary thing—it’s nerve-racking," Ms. Paloff said. "The thing that makes it OK for them is the fact that everybody in the class will be under the microscope."
Keith Pratt, dean of distance learning and instructional technology at NorthWest Arkansas Community College, teaches some online courses with Ms. Palloff. He said sometimes students try to script their online discussions ahead of time. But the students don’t get away with that for very long, he said.
"By the second day, we caught on," Mr. Pratt said. "We thought, We’ve been doing this for too long and things are going too smoothly here."
