Wow, what a great weekend! Pat had all three days off work, so we were able to clean the garage, watch movies & spend time together as a family ~ it was wonderful!
I started thinking about some of the different online classes I have had starting as far back as four years ago, and I tried to compare/contrast what I liked about them and what I didn't. I realized that just as every f2f classroom has different rules, strategies, and procedures - so do online courses. All of my online classes were not exactly the same...they shared similar characteristics, but were all very different. The class I am teaching this summer has some very different procedures that I am not sure I really like.
One example of this is the way discussion board forums are set up. Students must post by a certain date/time, respond to 2 classmates by a certain date/time, and the db forum closes at a certain date/time. Then to top it all off, the instructor told me she doesn't post on the db herself! I'm just not sure how that is promoting a community led classroom online when there is no discussion b/t the students and thier instructor. Maybe the dialogue is just exchanged on thier assignments when they are graded. I know that in the future, for my online class I would like to respond to every student (which I know is impossible if there are alot of students) & set up class chats where students can ask questions like once a week. Just in the last couple of weeks, I have had a few students call me asking questions that could have been answered via chat room or simple Q & A sessions.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
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Yes, I would agree. I know teachers are all different, but I strongly believe that they should participate in the discussion boards. All of the research points to the importance of teacher-student interaction as being one piece of the triad (student-student and student-content being the others).
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