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[mickeymantle]

Our college administration just enunciated as an official goal (as opposed to an unofficial one, for the past several years) an acceleration towards distance learning, or on-line classes.  Full-time faculty are now being urged to get on-line training.  Some of my colleagues are resisting, but I think the handwriting is on the wall.  What do other people think?

[zuzu_]

Welcome to the nineties, mickey!

[larryc]

Welcome to the nineties, mickey!

Hah! Yes, that.

Jump in, the water is fine. You will find that online classes take more effort to teach and have a different rhythm than you are used to. You will be MUCH busier than normal at the start of the semester and you will wonder "WTF why did I agree to do this?" Then towards the middle of the semester when the whiners and slackers have dropped you will find yourself with unexpected free time and you will be loving online teaching. The end of the semester is much the same as the classroom in terms of work.

The big advantage is the flexibility. I am teaching online this semester and teach from home two days a week. And by "teach from home" I mean go cross country skiing one of those days. Last time I did stop at the warming hut and answered some emails on my smartphone.

There have been a ton of threads here about strategies for teaching efficiently online.

[glowdart]

Since your school seems to just be starting this process, I would have your faculty senate-type-body demand that you have total autonomy over course content and that you not be forced to use canned classes.

[mountainguy]

My $.02, for whatever it's worth:


The handwriting is on the wall here too. From what I know about online/distance learning programs at other schools and from what I learned at a pedagogy conference a few years ago, the quality  of online classes is influenced largely by the resources, training, and support that are made available to instructors (and to the students too). Simply telling faculty "OK, go teach online now" is a recipe frustration and higher rates of burnout. Accordingly, my advice is to become involved in the process so that you can (hopefully) have some say in formulating online curricula and course design instead of having it sprung on you at a later date by someone else.

[larryc]

the quality  of online classes is influenced largely by the resources, training, and support that are made available to instructors (and to the students too). Simply telling faculty "OK, go teach online now" is a recipe frustration and higher rates of burnout.

Absolutely. The difficulty is that much of the training on how to teach online is from administrative apparatchiks with MA degrees in "instructional technology" who endlessly shovel whatever garbage they picked up at their last "Reinventing Education for the New Millennium!" conference.

[octoprof]

Our college administration just enunciated as an official goal (as opposed to an unofficial one, for the past several years) an acceleration towards distance learning, or on-line classes.  Full-time faculty are now being urged to get on-line training.  Some of my colleagues are resisting, but I think the handwriting is on the wall.  What do other people think?

Welcome to the future. This semester I have two online courses and one hybrid. In the fall, I have a similar mix. When we were asked to try developing online courses in the major I volunteered to be the sacrificial animal guinea pig. It goes best if you have good training and instructional support on campus and if you are not afraid to try new technologies, as well as spend enormous amounts of time developing the course content. It works best for courses you already know how to teach in the traditional manner so that you already know what you want to cover and are comfortable with the material.

Does it take ridiculous amounts of time up front? Yes. Is it worth it long term. It is for me and for many of my students an online option is helpful.

[glowdart]

the quality  of online classes is influenced largely by the resources, training, and support that are made available to instructors (and to the students too). Simply telling faculty "OK, go teach online now" is a recipe frustration and higher rates of burnout.

Absolutely. The difficulty is that much of the training on how to teach online is from administrative apparatchiks with MA degrees in "instructional technology" who endlessly shovel whatever garbage they picked up at their last "Reinventing Education for the New Millennium!" conference.

It's even worse when you have to teach courses designed by these apparatchiks.  

I don't go to online teaching workshops anymore unless they are given by my FT colleagues who have taught online and on the ground for years or are run by IT and are focused on "these are the new upgrades to the system.  We'll show you how they work."  

[mountainguy]

I don't go to online teaching workshops anymore unless they are given by my FT colleagues who have taught online and on the ground for years or are run by IT and are focused on "these are the new upgrades to the system.  We'll show you how they work." 

Yes, absolutely. My current department will not allow any online courses to be offered unless it has been designed by one of our full-time faculty members.* The adminwoodchucks are helpful for the technical side of things only.


*Currently, my department only offers one online course. But we've been approached by random departments elsewhere in the university who basically want to tell us what should be in our courses, hence the above policy.

[spork]

[. . .]

the quality  of online classes is influenced largely by the resources, training, and support that are made available to instructors (and to the students too).

It's also heavily influenced by the quality of the students. Undergraduate students who are disorganized, unmotivated, and/or technologically-illiterate will fail spectacularly in online courses, and it's the faculty's job to ensure that this happens. If numbers-happy administrators think that going online will magically improve retention, etc., they're delusional. If they start complaining that online content and standards have to be adjusted downward so that grades shift upward, you better start looking for another job.

Simply telling faculty "OK, go teach online now" is a recipe frustration and higher rates of burnout. Accordingly, my advice is to become involved in the process so that you can (hopefully) have some say in formulating online curricula and course design instead of having it sprung on you at a later date by someone else.

Yes. Faculty who are on the forward edge will be much better positioned than the slodgy tweed-jacketed ninnies.

I wish all my courses were online. Then I'd have no commute.

[octoprof]

[. . .]

the quality  of online classes is influenced largely by the resources, training, and support that are made available to instructors (and to the students too).

It's also heavily influenced by the quality of the students.

[. . .]

And by the quality of the effort faculty put into developing their online courses. My students tell me they are flabbergasted and thrilled once they get into my course and see it's not just a lot of powerpoint slides and assignments and problems to work. They get something more or less equivalent to the traditional course with lectures and demonstrations and how-tos that are analogous to what they'd see in the classroom. The delivery is different (loads of videos, of course) but the information is similar and their learning has been similar.  They tell me that many of the online courses at our university are simply lots of slides or readings to do and then exams to take. The professor hasn't tried to deliver anything using the media available beyond PPT and DOC files. I find that very sad (esp. as I know we have resources on campus to help faculty who want to developed rich online courses).

I wish all my courses were online. Then I'd have no commute.

Me, too! If I could teach all online courses (that I developed myself), I'd love it.

[_touchedbyanoodle_]

the quality  of online classes is influenced largely by the resources, training, and support that are made available to instructors (and to the students too). Simply telling faculty "OK, go teach online now" is a recipe frustration and higher rates of burnout.

Absolutely. The difficulty is that much of the training on how to teach online is from administrative apparatchiks with MA degrees in "instructional technology" who endlessly shovel whatever garbage they picked up at their last "Reinventing Education for the New Millennium!" conference.

Ahem, they are MS degrees and the conferences don't have snappy titles like that. They're called "the eLearning conference." Every single one of them.

:D

In all seriousness, like others, I love teaching online. Hybrid is my preferred mode of instruction, but I'll take online over fully face-to-face any day. If you can get the same courses each semester, the amount of up front work goes down dramatically after the first two times or so, once you've started to create content worth reusing.

[oldfullprof]

Okay for some grad courses.  Or with talented, dedicated undergrads.  Not a silver bullet. 

[egilson]

I'm looking forward to the time when 3D virtual worlds are stable enough, flexible enough, and easy enough to build content in for them to really work as a platform for online instruction. I'm getting to see just a little of that now, and students are far more engaged with it than I expected they would be. And, having "walked" through a careful reproduction of Villa Savoye in Second Life, I'm really excited by the potential even if most of the user-generated content there is pretty off-putting.

[amlithist]

I totally agree with those here who call for serious (not fluff) faculty training and strong faculty input re:  curriculum.  Buildinig a program with anything less is insulting and, likely, doomed to fail, long term.  I'd include as a necessity that the program be built and overseen neither top-down nor faculty-driven, but a combination of the two; either extreme misses critical considerations that the other party can/should provide.

Another critical need that's driving some schools to increase online ed:  brick and mortar issues.  I.e., we have a moratorium on spending on new space, for the foreseeable future, and we're already overcrowded, so online/hybrid is the logical next step. Of course, issues of competition from other schools (local, regional, and national) are also a consideration.  As our admin put it, these schools are "eating our lunch," and while we're a leader in so many other areas, we're way behind the curve here, and there's no good reason for it.  And with our CC population--parents, working adults (sometimes 2 or 3 part-time jobs, shift work, odd hours, split shifts), displaced workers, returning vets, a number of active-duty military currently in our online classes--it just makes sense.  Not to mention budgetary issues:  my Bboard and server capacity are already in place, so there's no real expense to online classes beyond faculty salary (no extra utilities, housekeeping, security, facilities, etc., costs per section offered).

I, too, look forward to the day I can teach fully online.  I don't mind being on campus to do the usual service things like committee work, etc., but online teaching is heaven for a hard-core introvert like me.