This article by Diana G. Oblinger and Brian L. Hawkins gave some ground rules and questions to think about for online courses. Pedagogy and technology expertise are very important in developing and delivering quality online courses and the authors expressed how this has not occurred very frequently. Reasoning behind their claim was that many faculty members do not have savvy technology skills, so the courses are not presented with the ability for students and teachers to interact. The article stresses that to have successful and quality online courses, their needs to be a team effort between faculty, students, and technical staff. A few questions the authors suggested we think about are:
What is the best use of the faculty member, an expensive institutional resource?
Do we have a process for strategically investing in course development?
Do we confuse providing content with creating a learning environment or delivering a course?
What is the return we hope to see from our investment in course development?
After reading the article, I thought of my experience with my online class. It was pretty much a joke, where I would read the material and then write a summary about what I read and summit it to the instructor each week. I took the online course one summer, so I could get through my entire general university requirement courses fast. The article said something about using online courses for this very purpose, to graduate students on time. There was never any interaction between my peers or my instructor and myself. I would just turn papers in and receive a grade for the work I did. The online course didn’t teach me anything, so I understand what the authors are discussing when they bring up the point that online classes could be great if it was a team effort and not just done at an individual level.
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