Deeper conversations online than face-to-face

Today I expressed the opinion on Twitter that conversations and connections made in online classes are deeper and more layered than those which occur in face-to-face classes. Not only do I believe this strongly based on my experiences in online education as a student, designer, and instructor over the last 13 years but I have comments from many, many students to back this assertion up. I think a discussion of how and why this occurs may require more than one blog post so consider this the start of a conversation. Conducted online... hmmm

Let me start with that hmmm. Whomever is reading this post is now part of a conversation which I very likely never would have had in person. In fact this morning's Twitter exchange with two other educators would never have happened face-to-face, I have never been to the institutions represented by those in the conversation. Online you can connect with people you never would meet IRL (in real life). Online classes bring together a more diverse population than happens in most face-to-face settings. My student population in any particular class might inhabit 3, 4, or more countries all around the globe. Their ages, backgrounds, and culture are usually very diverse. The only thing they have in common is an interest in the topic being studied and an Internet connection.

Deeper conversations occur because of the tools we use in online courses. First picture a traditional classroom. The instructor has a set amount of time for the instructional activities and student questions before students set off for the next class. If Student A asks a question which takes 15 minutes of the discussion time then other members of the class may not get to ask their question at all. Or perhaps they ask it after class where they may get a hurried response other students do not hear and do not benefit from as part of the learning environment.

In an online asynchronous discussion every student can ask questions and get answers from the instructor. Other students can be a part of the discussion of all of those questions. The discussion occurs over a long period of time, such as a week, which allows time for further thought, research, and formulation of well-considered answers and responses. This deepening of the response is something I rarely experienced in face-to-face classes but it is a very regular part of discussions in my online classes. 

I am going to post this and start the conversation. In the meantime I am going to mull the other points rattling around in my brain. I am also going to gather quotes from students about how connected they feel to other students and instructors in online courses. This conversation is likely going to take some time. No bell is going to ring to stop the conversation at the end of a class session. That's not the way conversations happen online.

Begging for communication

Can I just say... I hate to beg. Does anyone really like to beg someone for communications? Probably not, but it is becoming a real pet peeve with me.

Several business people I have been dealing with... Well let's just say I believe if they want my business they will provide some service and will communicate with me. I shouldn't have to keep asking and begging for the information I want/need to move forward with a business arrangement. Grrr

And as an online instructor I shouldn't have to beg students to communicate with me. A couple of recent instances have me really perplexed. I wasn't sure one student was getting my messages. In my emails I said, please let me know if you are getting my messages. Can I be more clear than that? I expect you to reply. I shouldn't have to tell you to reply, as a matter of courtesy a student should say "Thank you I got your message about blah and I understand/will do the following..." I am very prompt at returning student emails... they should promptly let me know they got my message.

In another case a student let me know after a multi-week disappearance from an online class that they had a medical issue. Unless you are in a coma, please ask someone to open your email and send a quick message to the instructor letting them know there is a medical emergency. In this case the medical issue wasn't an emergency at all and the student could have advised me about the need for an extension of due dates. However since the student did not contact me in advance or at any time during the several weeks of absence nor were there replies to my messages asking if there was a problem, I had no choice but to apply the late policy.

Communication is a two-way street. Students have a responsibility to communicate with instructors. And instructors have a responsibility to reply in a prompt, informative manner. Making me beg repeatedly to find out if the student is getting my messages offering technical assistance so I know if the help worked just ticks me off. And I end up writing a blog posting! In this case I guess the ignorance lies with the online student population. Hopefully the following plainly stated message helps dispel that ignorance: Students... you have a responsibility to communicate with the online instructor!

Instructor interference with learning

So many blog topics... so little time... I have more to say about the circles I keep finding in my travels around the Internet and so much more to say about paper constipation however... today's topic stems from an idea I included in a posting on my friend Lisa Chamberlin's OpenPhD blog.

Lisa is pursuing an unaccredited but very real doctorate using only Open Courses. This is a new way of thinking about online education which is opening eyes in many locations, and is causing me to rethink what I believe about online education. Those topics are explored in a guest posting made today on #OpenPhd.

One thought I mentioned in my guest posting was how an online instructor could actually interfere with student learning. While this can also occur in a f2f setting I think the danger for this happening in online education is higher because the student is not directly in front of the instructor saying, "Hey, wait...I have a question"

In the online realm if the course is poorly designed students are often stymied and frustrated. Their issues may include not:

• understanding course navigation
• being able do course readings because of broken links or unavailable textbooks
  
• understanding instructor expectations

These are just a few of the course design issues which may need clarification. Instructors who believe they do not need to read or answer discussion postings/emails/phone calls cause students to become even more frustrated. Would a face-to-face instructor refuse to clarify expectations or answer questions about locating readings?

Instructors can also interfere with student learning which should stem from instructor-learner interaction. There are three key sets of interactions which should occur in any course:

• learner-content (student internal/mental interaction with the materials and concepts)
  
• learner-learner (student communication with colleagues in the course about the concepts)
  
• learner-instructor (student learning about the content from the content expert and having their understandings expanded, clarified, and corrected)
  

Probably 90% of the complaints I hear about online education have to do with instructors who refuse to communicate with their students. These students report to me their instructors do not answer emails, do not participate in discussions, and do not respond to questions asked of them. Student learning has to include communication with the content expert, that is THE JOB of the instructor.

The other job of the instructor is to clarify student understandings, correct misconceptions, and expand on student learning by adding new ideas or asking deep thinking questions. This can occur through discussion or it can occur as feedback on assignments. Formative assessment we call this... assessment which helps the learner's understanding grow and develop during the course.

To be useful to students formative assessment must be prompt, informative, and accurate. Responding to Assignment 1 weeks after it was submitted is of little use to students who have now submitted Assignments 2, 3, 4, 5... without any guidance or input. As one student told me,

"Oh he is real picky, real picky about things but I only know this because I had a class from him already. All my colleagues in this class have no idea what he expects because he hasn't told us what he expects and he hasn't returned any assignments. He won't hand anything back until the course is over and then it will be too late."

This instructor returns all student work in a flurry at the end of the course. If students were failing to meet his expectations how would they have known what aspects of their work to fix as the course progressed? The answer is, they don't. And some fail or get poor grades. That does a lot for student morale! The failure is the instructors but the instructor still got paid for doing his job, even though he DID NOT do his job.

And this is today's point of ignorance... How does such an instructor look themselves in the mirror with a clear conscience? How do they cash their paycheck and not cringe just a little? How is it this person is still employed, still teaching, still perpetuating this farce called online instruction? I don't get it! Yours in ignorance!

Mobile computing... the panacea and the reality

This week I was on the move and still teaching my online courses. This is not unusual. Many of us who teach online courses do so from a variety of locations. See my friend Lisa's blog posting about Virgiwiscaliwa. My husband has a foundation which helps people and the environment in Ecuador and travels to S. America quite often. His students never know if he is in an Internet cafe in Puerto Lopez, Ecuador or if he is in Washington state, where we live. Three of our 4 children, and the two grandchildren live on the east coast, so we frequently travel to the east coast to see them. And Lisa offered to meet me in NYC this time so we could play and work!

I travel so frequently that I don't really think about what I need to have or do before I leave. In fact, this time I forgot that I had gotten a new laptop recently and didn't think through what I needed to do to set it up. Mobile computing is so much a part of my life I don't think much about it. I have a Sprint aircard so that I can get the Internet anywhere there is a Sprint phone signal but I didn't set up the new laptop to use the aircard before I left. If my destination is an urban area the Sprint aircard works great. However if you are in the hinterlands, a Sprint signal is not always available I have found.

So I find myself in Manhattan, without the aircard but I figured there would be free Wi-fi pretty much everywhere. Not really! Many people have gotten smart about their home Internet signals and have secured them (smart on their part not convenient for me) and many businesses offer Wi-fi but...

In one cute, quiet deli (with great food) they offered free Wi-fi with a purchase. What they didn't say was that their signal was so weak, and they were so clueless about their own system, that we would be knocked offline over and over again. Just sending a file from one computer to another became an exercise in patience and endurance. In another location, signing up with a particular carrier and paying that carrier was required. In other locations such as Barnes and Noble we had good Wi-fi connections but we were working on unsecured systems. This made us a little uneasy about some of the work we needed to do.

My phone does have email and web capabilities but it is still pretty slow, and I cannot access most of my course sites on my phone. I know this is changing. My daughter accesses her online courses (which use the Angel LMS) via her iPhone but the interface is pretty cumbersome. I am going to be working on a project shortly using Desire2Learntogo so I will get my own taste of mobile computing by smart phone.

Admittedly, if I had remembered to set up my laptop before leaving with my Sprint aircard, that would have helped. However, I know from experience that I cannot always get a good strong Sprint signal. And I know I can access the Internet and email from my phone but it really sucks the life out of the battery very quickly. I cannot use that option for very long each day unless I want to be tethered to a plugin to keep the battery going.

The bottom line is that traveling + computing is still not the panacea it could be or should be. The reality is that there were many times I could not get online, or could not do what I needed to do as part of my job as an online instructor/course designer. However I am still learning. Lisa showed me how she connects her laptop to her BlackBerry and uses the BlackBerry as a modem. There may well be something similar I could be doing with my Sprint phone without needing the aircard. Again, I think I may be ignorant of all the possibilities.

Yours in ignorance!