5 WAYS TO

with the Online ClassroomGET STARTED

An Instructor’s Field Guide

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Onward…onlineOver the last decade, educational consultants and pun-dits have used a heap of rosy adjectives to describe the increasingly prolific online classroom: engaging, flexible, innovative, even revolutionary.

And while a growing number of faculty have embraced the online classroom, you’re just as likely to get a di!erent description from the silent majority. Fifty-eight percent of faculty members say that the growth of online education makes them more fearful than excited.

That fear is justified, especially among faculty who haven’t taken the plunge into teaching online

“I didn’t know if students were getting it,” says Katherine Dowdell, District Chair for Social and Behavioral Sciences at Des Moines Area Community College. “I didn’t know how it was coming across. I was missing a lot of the dynamics of a traditional classroom.”

In volunteering to explore online teaching, Dowdell was prepared to be surprised but did not anticipate some as-pects of the struggle.

“”

Fifty-eight percent of faculty members say that the growth of online education makes them more fearful than excited.

58%

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“Another thing that was just so vastly di!erent was that when I began teaching in a traditional classroom, I had at least 20 years of experience sitting in the student’s seat. I had observed things that worked and didn’t work, and great teachers and so-so teachers. But when I started teaching online, I had never taken an online class. I had no context for what it should be like.”

Seven years after teaching her first Web-enabled course, Dowdell’s fears have abated and her online classes are going strong. She even coaches colleagues on how to be successful online. Here are her top tips for launching an online classroom.

I didn’t know if students were getting it. I didn’t know how it was coming across. I was missing a lot of the dynamics of a traditional classroom.

“

”Katherine Dowdell District Chair for Social and Behavioral Sciences at Des Moines Area Community College.

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1 Be an unabashed borrower.*

Seek out peers—even at other schools—who are hav-ing success in the online classroom. Read through their materials and take note of what’s interesting to you. Note, too, how much of their material is traditional text, how much is video, and how much is student-generated content. You can tweak the structure to fit your course and your students’ needs, but starting with a colleague’s course shell or publisher provided content will make constructing your own online course much less daunting.

Ask for on-campus resources. Look for training oppor-tunities at industry conferences. And take advantage of webinars and discussion groups sponsored by your learning management system.

*(with permission, of course!)

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2 Build until you’re finished.

Once you’ve poured the foundation, build the rest — in advance. “Set up the course from beginning to end be-fore opening day,” Dowdell advises. “I think the biggest mistake people make is trying to teach the course and build the course at the same time. It’s like starting to build a house and then moving in before you have the roof on. It’s just not a good idea.”

If you are moving a traditional course to an online envi-ronment, you can use some of the same structure, but realize that you will have to add more interactive content, figure out ways to incorporate discussions into assign-ments, and have a full understanding of how students will be evaluated.

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Set up the course from beginning to end before opening day“

”A critical component in creating a success-ful online classroom is structure. Giving students step-by-step instructions to navigate their course — and the technology — is key to their engagement and success in the classroom.

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3 Set up an engagement triple play.

Capitalize on the online classroom’s number one advantage: multi-faceted engagement. Unlike a tra-ditional classroom, where information and interac-tion flows from instructor to student (and may stop there), the online classroom enables three avenues of engagement:

Set expectations so students take fuller advantage of this new paradigm. One barometer of success: you observe rich dialogue among students.

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Conversations take multiple forms and are not bound by the time constraints of a traditional class.

“When I provide meaningful ways for students to in-teract with each other, that becomes the foundation for the course,” she says. “When students give feed-back saying the discussions were the best part of the course, I am thrilled. That’s where they are challenged to respond to what they’ve learned.”

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4 Know what you’ll do when students need tech support.

Some students will settle right into an online learning environment. Others will struggle—sometimes with the methodology, sometimes with technology tools. Be ready for your role as a tech support first responder. Depending on your level of tech comfort, you can ap-proach this in a few ways:

-point them as guides for others.

Get familiar with the troubleshooting FAQs provided by your school’s IT department or your LMS. Ask IT to walk you through the three (or five) most common problems for online learners.

-lems you can’t solve. Before the course starts, get

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the hotline number and the names of any IT trouble-shooters who are assigned to your department or college.

“This is a gray area for many online teachers,” Dowdell says. “Some say, ‘Well, it’s not my role to be tech sup-port.’ But that’s very frustrating for students. Most of the problems are relatively straightforward—things like how the browser is set up or whether a student clicked yes or no to see secure content. I think instructors feel more comfortable in the online environment when they have a plan for responding to students who need help.”

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5 Be present and responsive.

As an online instructor, you can’t stand in front of your students and witness their confused looks or their “Aha!” moments. That’s what tripped up Dowdell at first, until she figured out how to reach students virtually. Online instructors have to be present, she says, with video-assisted synchro-nous “face time,” when possible, and certainly on discussion boards. In addition, you must be responsive to students’ questions or concerns. Check your email—often—and set online o"ce hours where you will be available to students via instant messaging, email, or phone. Send your own messages to students regularly, too, to gauge whether they are “getting it,” she advises.

It’s a di!erent way of teaching and learning, but it comes with rewards not found in the traditional classroom, Dowdell contends. “Face-to-face students put boundary lines around their learning — it happens in Room 6 on Tuesdays and

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Thursdays from 9:40 to 11:05 a.m. Online students don’t tend to do that, so the potential is there for students to become more active and self-directed in their learning. For example, in a virtual classroom, discussions can develop over time, and this lets them evolve and deepen in a way that we usu-ally don’t have time for in face-to-face classes. That limitless, lack-of-boundaries environment is one of the tremendous advantages of the online classroom.”

18.3%

Annual growth of student enrollment in online courses for 2002-2010Source: Conflicted: Faculty and Online Education, 2012

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