Distance Learning

At the midpoint of this course I am amazed by the many aspects that must be considered when developing an online course and at the plethora of studies that exist on good practices when facilitating one. Despite the many models that exist for an online course, it seems that the essence of the planning, execution, and ultimately the success of the course lies in good communication; that is, communication between the instructor and students and between the students themselves.The methods of communication encompass many avenues-blogs, wikis, emails, course materials, and assignments are some of them. In the completely asynchronous environment of an online class, in which there is no physical interaction between participants, written communication is the only method for interactions to take place. Therefore, the style and clarity of these communication tools are of the utmost importance. In the synchronous learning environment of a classroom there exist other clues for understanding communications including interpreting body language, physical gestures, and tone of voice. Effective communication and understanding become much more difficult when the written word is the only method used. Additionally, in online distance education, students may be multinational and experiencing cultural and language differences and adjustments. This adds another element to be considered by the developer of an online course. The addition of video clips and links to audio and video resources are a way to include additional information relevant to the course which may increase the students’ understanding and opportunities to use different learning styles.
Another observation I have made at this point in our course, having had the opportunity to “observe” an online class from the perspective of the instructor, is that asynchronous classes entail a lot more work on the part of both the instructor and the student. In an asynchronous environment the instructor is never able to take a break from checking discussion boards because students can post dialog or assignments at any time. Rather than being more flexible the online course could be more demanding of one’s time because there is never a time when the instructor isn’t “on call”. Obviously, the instructor should take it upon herself to manage her time and establish a routine for running her online class, but it is not like a traditional college setting when the professor has defined office hours for appointments. Also, in the asynchronous environment, the instructor has no way of gauging a student’s participation or commitment to the class other than the assignments that are submitted electronically. From a student’s perspective, it appears that the instructors must “create” assignments, busy work, to justify the assigned work load because that is the only way an instructor can determine if a student is keeping up with the reading assignments. In a synchronous classroom setting, group discussion and collaboration are more easily evaluated by the professor.
As a student, I don’t think I want to take many courses online. As an instructor or facilitator I would not mind teaching a course, provided I had good professional training in developing and moderating an asynchronous online course.