College Professor on Teaching Online Classes

I'll Never Do It Again - Chronicle.com.

This much I can say with certainty: I have years of experience successfully teaching in collegiate classrooms, and online teaching doesn't compare. So I'll just chalk up my first and only venture to experience and make my way back to the traditional academy. Here are five reasons why.

I have taken one online class and one "hybrid" (some lecture, mostly online) class and I must say I do not get as much out of them as a live, face-to-face class. I haven't done a teleconferencing class. I'll let you know when I do. Update: Amy Williams tweeted these comments

Ha. I maintain that ftf teaching and online teaching are two different skill sets. Some instructors have both; some don't. I might add I've taught ftf for 20 years, and online and hybrid for 13 years. :)

Comments

[Elaine of Kalilily]

I left you this message on Facebook, but I will do it here as well. You might want to start a conversation with a good friend of mine, Linda K. Ryder, who has developed all kinds of online and hybrid courses and who has assisted many professors in developing such approaches to teaching that have been both successful and enjoyable. It's also interesting for me to read your posts on education and learning disabilities, since I live with my daughter and family and she home-schools my grandson, Lex. (She's on Facebook as well (Melissa Volker). While not technically "learning disabled," Lex would probably have wound up being labeled ADD if he had stayed in a regular school classroom. Instead, he is amazingly bright and funny and creative.

[Pat]

Amy's right.

Online teaching *is* a different skill set. Heck, you only need to read the outstanding literature on knowledge management to know that this is its own problem domain.

Elayne's comments aren't to be discounted; she mentions real problems with online courses - both for the instructor and the students. I know people who take courses through University of Phoenix online; about 2/3rd of them are designed horribly.

Also, online courses lend themselves to certain types of teaching methods and student populations but not others. If your teaching style requires a lot of synchronous one to one communication, online courses are probably going to cause you no end of frustration. If you're looking at marginally motivated undergraduates, you're probably not going to be well-served by an online course design.

... that said, it can work. It can work really well in some use cases, for that matter; even better than ftf learning for certain student populations.

[online schools]

We can never the deny the bias that some employers and companies have over diplomas earned online.

[online schools]

Let's keep our fingers crossed.