Pamela Gustafson's Archive
Posted by Pamela Gustafson on February 17th, 2009
Relationships with online teachers are a highlight of the online classroom. In a large lecture- on- site class a student might be able to get in a question or two, or set up an appointment with the teacher. If the class is exceptionally large the teacher might not be able to match a face with a name. In an online class personalization is through email. When the instructor requires a picture of the student, they can match a face with name. There was one class where the instructor did not respond enough to my posts and I felt I was not getting the feedback I needed.
Readings and websites assigned by my professors were also of a stellar quality. I don’t know how they selected these readings from the billions of online documents, but it shows how the teachers master their subject and spend long hours researching before they post assignments. Many of the readings were from current literature and not from out dated textbooks.
Recently, the Milwaukee Journal ran an article about a college professor who excels at designing online classes. Her classes helped marginal students succeed in their freshman year of college. The proof of the success was documented by a supervised exam given to students in both on-site and online versions of the same class. The professor incorporated quizzes, which were taken over and over again until students mastered the content. Students couldn’t even take the quiz until the computer recorded their participation of games based on the content being tested. The class is Psychology 101 and I believe she practiced what psychologists preach. She looked at the way young people communicate through technology, and adapted it for her class. A forum posted on the front page of the Milwaukee Journal followed this article and there were many interesting opinions. I put in my two cents worth.
Posted by Pamela Gustafson on February 14th, 2009
My online classes use different methods of communication utilizing all the read/write web has to offer. This includes “asynchronous” and “synchronous” communication.
Asynchronous communication includes email, posting on an online platform like Blackboard or Moodle, or posting on a blog or wiki the instructor created.
Synchronous communication is scheduled at a specific time and date, and students must schedule around the appointed time. These can be similar to chat programs and can include audio, or audio plus video.
Asynchronous classes are the most popular because participants learn at a time convenient for them, though there are still due dates, just like on site classes. Either way, both types of online learning allow you to be at home, even in your pajamas in the comfort of your home.
Moodle is the platform I use frequently as a student and now I am learning the platform from the perspective of a teacher. I am noticing that there is a lot more to the platform than what my college instructors used. Most of my classes were to read articles, respond to the articles and then reply to other classmates who also state their opinions or thoughts about the readings. Assessments were usually written papers instead of quizzes, although Moodle had the ability to create, implement, and grade quizzes. One of my classes was to learn to effectively assess my own students’ work (generally a product with a rubric, handed out beforehand) and to post it online, This required me to scan, which was tedious, but I enjoyed looking at the student work other teachers posted.
The program I was required to use most was called Elluminate. Most of us had microphones and earphones. The instructor had the ability to pass the microphone to whoever volunteered to speak. We could also raise a virtual hand through a simple hand icon. There was a white board that posted slides as the instructor spoke. Students had the ability to post a response on the white board. You could chat by typing, but those online students who didn’t use headphones and earphones quickly went out to buy them.
Video chat less common but my sister in Texas and I use Google Video chat to talk each week. At first it wasn’t easy. I have an Macintosh and from my end everything worked immediately. She has a PC and had to mess around with setup and downloading drivers. This poses a problem for video professors who may have to impose minimum computer requirements, which could leave some students behind.
Most of my classes were on demand with what I call the online Three Rs, reading, responding and replying. It worked for me.
Online courses became a reality as colleges realized education is like panty hose. One size does not really fit all. I am a relatively small woman 5 ft 4 and 138 pounds and I know that if I buy pantyhose with the label one size fits all, they are going to be somewhat snug. I was drawn to the online courses because they fit my hectic schedule, the on site environment no longer fits my needs.
I take online courses because I believe in the importance of staying up to date on methods and trends. Educational researchers have discovered a great deal about brain development and 21st century skills. At the same time, the monolithic approach in K-12 education that served students well during the industrial era of our country, is declining in its effectiveness.
Students are far more diverse today. Educatiors need to individualize education to meet this diversity. Monolithic approach teachers run the risk of boring students and frustrating others. I did not need a new degree to stay employed as a teacher, but I did need contemporary courses to stay up to date with what I described in the paragraphs preceding.
Professional courses were either online or online with on-site contact. In the process, I learned a lot about the online environment and how it could be used for my own students. Courses included the use of Elluminate, a real time chatting program, where I could hear the voices of my online classmates. There was a “white board” that could be turned on for online student responses. This program and programs like it have great potential for meeting individual needs. Because I teach middle school, many students still need the auditory and visual presence of a teacher. Many middle school students are still not reading well enough to be educated online – they aren’t up to “read and respond” assignments. Read and respond was great for me, but I read and write at a sophisticated level. Like many people working on college degrees, I had to keep working to support myself and online education provided me this opportunity
The courses I took were of my on choosing to enhance what I do as a teacher. But courses are greater than the sum of the individual skills and concepts of the courses. I learned how to “excel” with Excel, set up discussions for staff development, integrate technology into reading, assess student work, and more. More importantly, I became adept at being a student in the online environment – preparation for my own foray into online teaching.
Education is like pantyhose; one size does not fit all. College professors and administrators have figured this out by using the online environment to enroll students who must work full time while getting their degree, or for students like me who need new skills while working full time.
One of my favorite pieces of playground equipment was the teeter-totter. I used to spend hours going up and down with my siblings or friends. Occasionally we would stop moving by sitting in such away that the long board of the teeter-totter was balanced, and we could relax and talk. Relaxing was good but the ride was better.
I thrive on activity. The more the teeter-totter goes up and down the happier I am. There is a down side to this love of activity. I am the queen of overcommitting. One day someone from church called and asked me to be on another committee. My husband answered this call and I heard him say, “If she signs up for one more thing I will have to put her in a psychiatric hospital. “ He didn’t pass the phone to me and pretended I wasn’t home.
There were two things that really worked for me in regards to the time management of my over committed life, early mornings and weekends. I scheduled my assignments and preparation for my own students so that I did the bulk of this commitment leisurely on weekends. I bounced out of bed every day an hour or two before my two children to check my online classes and to respond to emails or posts from other class members. I didn’t always need all this time, but it established a routine. I worked ahead in the class if I finished before I needed to get my children going and me to my job. I saved my work in Microsoft Word to post later on. At the beginning of each online class I entered due dates into Yahoo calendar. I scheduled the calendar to send me an email two days before the assignment was due, and then another email reminder the day it was due.
Evenings were reserved for my children. I wasn’t going to entrust them to others all day and leave them with babysitters at night, although they were in school full time before I took online classes. My eldest was a night owl and it was difficult to get him to calm down and even more difficult to get him up the next morning. I would often fall asleep on the couch before he was quiet for the night. There was no way I was going to do online class work at this time. Even if I did outlast my son’s ride on his teeter-totter, I was too exhausted to keep playing on mine.
Parenting means that you have to put your own needs on hold. I didn’t play bridge or have much of a social life. My children quickly morphed into productive and happy adults. I am glad they were my priority during their formative years. I can’t get those years back. The online classes are still there.
The teeter-totter of my life now involves a full time teaching job and private tutoring at night to pay for my daughter’s college tuition. Because of a predisposition to high cholesterol and my body’s rejection of statin drugs, my morning computer time has been replaced by 45 minutes to an hour of working out on an elliptical machine in my basement. I watch the morning news and after my old muscles have warmed up I actually enjoy this new routine. Now I work on any classes I take, for an hour or two in the late evening or early evening on the days I don’t tutor. I usually don’t work in the summer so it is prime time for me to schedule online classes. Without my children the teeter-totter has slowed and I still enjoy the ride.
The first two online courses I took were the first steps to being certified as a Microsoft network administrator. It was a topic that was somewhat foreign to me, and fortunately it was a highly programmed approach to learning. There were modules of information presented followed by a quiz. You could take the quiz to see how much you remembered and if you didn’t like the results you could restudy the module and take it over again.
At first I found this refreshing because I could work until mastery. It was refreshing not to have to think at a higher level and synthesis information into papers that only my instructor would read. I even dreamed that these types of modules would be created to provide the necessary repetition to students who were struggling to learn to read.
The downside to this approach was there was very little interaction between other members taking the class. I did enjoy being in my own home and working at my own pace. Eventually I tired of the highly programmed approach and felt very isolated. I also found out I didn’t want to be a network administrator.
The next online courses were centered around teaching and there was a lot of interaction among the members of the class. The email was overwhelming but I dealt with it by creating folders in Outlook Express for each member of the class. I also noticed a pattern of responses among the class members. The first person who emailed or posted their responses to the other members of the class, usually received the most feedback. I tried to be near the front of the responding pack and also vowed to respond to every person in the class. One of the classes used an online platform and I didn’t have to download the email to my computer. I could just go to the class site and I liked this a lot better. Since this was 2001 in the infancy of online education this will probably not be a problem. I like how platforms like Moodle allow a student to post responses, but also offer the option of private email.
Online classes are different from onsite classes. No sponges are allowed. You can’t sit in the back of the classroom and soak up information, and choose not to participate in the discussion. You are expected to participate and your participation is measured. The instructor can store and count your number of responses to assignments and to other members You can’t hide. You have to be an effective sponge, you soak up the information and then squeeze your brain of the information and your reaction for all to hear and see.
Online instructors from the University of Milwaukee Nursing school have told me that online classes are more work for the instructor. This was in response to my question of why the University of Milwaukee charged more for online classes. They brought up my point about responding to all class members and not just the few who volunteer to talk in class.
My advice to prospective students is to remember you can’t be a sponge when you are in a online class. Your lack of responding and lateness are highly visible to the instructor. The tradeoff is a high degree of flexibility for a higher amount of accountability. No sponges allowed.
Before enrolling in a college program (online or onsite), there’s a lot of planning, thinking and reflecting that must go on. This process varies in time, depending on the person. Matching someone’s interests and talents with a college major and lucrative career is often a time consuming task.
Me? I knew my future career when I graduated from high school. I was a product of the fthe fifties and sixties culture, and the only consistent female role models were teachers and nurses. My mom wanted a nurse in the family, but I wanted to teach. In hindsight, the job culture of my time made the choice easier, far more so than it is with today’s young people. But obviously, not all women are cut out to be caregivers, teachers and nurses.
I have two children both majoring in political science. My oldest son knew he wanted to be a politician since eighth grade, when he participated in a mock campaign and convention. He joined the marines for four years and afterwards connected with many political veteran’s organizations while he worked on his degree.
Now he’s interning as a legislative aide in Nevada for one semester, and is using the online environment to take two more classes, as his internship is a great distance from the university he attends. His use of the online environment kept the plan to graduate in 3 ½ years on track. He plans on running for office and entering law school.
My daughter floundered for a year declaring her major as Spanish, and then by process of elimination chose political science, a topic she finds interesting. Her floundering cost the family an extra semester of tuition, two semesters if you count summer school. The good news, she discovered that her university offered some of her classes online, so she could work full time in the summer and still take classes via the computer. She does not want to run for office and doesn’t know where she is going to work after college. Of course, her mother’s fantasy is that she can someday be paid to work on her brother’s campaign.
The most time-consuming part of the enrollment process is deciding what you want to study. If you have a clear vision of your college and career goals, finding an online program and enrolling is no big deal. This web site achieveyourcareer.com is a great example of how large amounts of college information can be gathered for a individual. The information can then be easily accessed from the comfort of one’s own home. When a student’s career goals are not defined, which I suspect is common, I advise students to find universities where general studies classes transfer easily to other colleges.
The most time consuming part of the enrollment process is the decision. The decision could be made in 8th grade or at the age of 19 or older. The actual enrollment with all the online tools available, is actually quite fast. Instead of snail mailing in requests for the documents colleges require, you can usually do this by email. The ease of the internet can speed up the process when trying to get into a program or class just before the semester starts. There have been times when I have enrolled in an online class a few days before the semester starts. It is the easiest part of the process, as compared to the decision of what to study.
My online classes were easy to apply for because I already had a bachelor and masters degrees and usually enroll as a special student. If I enrolled for a specific degree the process involved a lot more.
My best advice for prospective college students is to be prepared. I keep all the information I need to enroll in classes or apply for jobs in a Microsoft Word doc in my computer. Much of the information asked on college enrollment forms and job applications is the same. This list helps me quickly retrieve information I need to fill out the forms. My Word file also includes names and addresses, including ZIP codes of all the Universities I attended. I have been out of high school nearly 37 years and I am still asked for that information!
On the same file, I also keep links to university web sites that help me to order transcripts. My “vitals file” also includes names, addresses and email of people who may be personal and professional references. Finally, it lists employers and their addresses. I recently updated my vitals file to include skills (usually technology related) I have learned.
Occasionally, colleges ask for an essay or a statement of philosophy. I always write these in Microsoft Word and save them. Writing is the most cumbersome part of the process and it helps to catalog similar statements. Cut and paste comes in mighty handy!
My computer helps me to organize application materials. All the documents I referred to previously are stored in a sub folder in My Documents. The folder is appropriately named Application Materials and I keep several versions of my resume in this folder.
The key to efficiently filling out application forms is your ability to quickly access the information requested. When this information is in one easily accessible location, the process becomes SO much easier. Oh yes, one more important note. Don’t forget to load a copy of your vitals file on your thumb drive. You can never be too careful, right? Good luck!
Our world has flattened, so to speak, thanks to the internet, and I’ve had opportunities to talk with people from around the globe. Some of these people have become quite dear to me. One such person is Srini from India. He was complimentary of the slideshows I posted on Slideshare.net and an email friendship developed.
Srini connected me with a young woman from the Netherlands, and the three of us created an inspirational slide show and posted it collaboratively. We never sat down face to face, but together we created a project thousands of miles apart. When I viewed the recent violence India I emailed Srini to make sure he was okay. He said he was safe and that many others from Slideshare had also expressed concern. I feel like he is “local” just as all my online classes and communities feel local. Columbus never found India, but I did!
Two of my first online classes were not local, and one was. In all three, I developed intellectual relationships. I have been keeping in touch via email with one teacher I met in a since 2001 non-local class. Since the class, I haven’t had contact with any of the students from my local class. After my experiences I have no preference as to whether the classes are local or not.
What is important to me is content. I want classes that specifically help me improve my skills as a teacher. As technology changes, I find it important to stay ahead of my students, many of whom are learning on their own. Interestingly enough, I am looking at a progam in e-learning offered through a state university system here in Wisconsin. The consideration of this program has nothing to do with the location of the university. So far, it’s the program that piques my interest. I have read all the course descriptions and what fascinates me is that many of the skills I already learned through online classes were provided by my very own school district.
Posted by Pamela Gustafson on December 25th, 2008
In 2001 I went fishing in a small pool of online classes, not knowing at the time what kinds of fish I wanted to catch, but I knew this: I wanted to learn fresh new ideas. I started taking an online class from a technical school, to get a taste of what it would be like to be a network specialist. Teachers are always complaining about computers not working. The first fish I caught was a class to become certified as a Microsoft Administrator. I found out quickly that I didn’t like the taste of this fish! There was little human-to-human interaction in the regimen and it didn’t fit my style. While I was successful in the class, most of my classmates were recent high school grads. It was the wrong pond for me, though it was a good experience and a lot cheaper than taking a university class. I learned that I needed to combine my interest in computers with my first love of helping children grow and develop.
I didn’t really need to do a search or request information. The information came to me in the form of flyers from various universities. The universities know that true educators believe continuing education is imperative and they capitalize on this knowledge by marketing to teachers. The information they voluntary sent was helpful and I took the bait and signed up for classes. Shortly after that, I found another fishing pond — in my very own school district. They offered online classes for all teachers in the district. While the classes were not for credit, they helped me to develop skills to use computers effectively with students.
Currently, I have decided to go deep sea fishing! I am interested in a set of skills that will allow me to be employed as an online elementary or middle school teacher. I’m not interested in a degree. The University of Wisconsin—Stout offers an e-learning certificate that can open doors for online teachers. There’s now an explosion of public schools offering this option for their students. After 34 years of dragging my tired body out of bed and working a 9- to 10-hour day, I long for the day when I can crawl out of bed, limp to my computer in my pajamas (diet pepsi in hand), and correct assignments emailed or posted online. The Ocean of Opportunity available to me can also reach my own students. Let’s hope they go fishing for something valuable, too!
Posted by Pamela Gustafson on December 17th, 2008
My search for online classes was not about getting a degree; it was more like a fishing expedition. It was about finding courses that would help improve my skills as a teacher. Computers and technology were quickly expanding on the education scene and I wanted to be ready. Having watched my son’s intense interest in computers, I knew computers were a venue to reach unmotivated students (which he was at times). During this time I also switched school districts and found out the new district was ahead of my former district in purchasing computers. I looked for practical courses to enhance my teaching with computers, so I chose courses from different universities.
The search started in 2001. The pond of online courses was smaller then,unlike the sea of online classes available today. The University of Northern Iowa had the biggest lake of online classes for teachers. They understood how many K-12 teachers already had masters degrees and needed courses to improve their skills in the classroom. The two classes I took from UNI were “Excel with Excel” and “Using the Internet for Staff Development”
From a flyer I received in the mail from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, I found an online course titled “Using Computers to Teach Reading in Early Childhood.” This course required two on-site meetings; the rest of the class was online. In all three courses I felt much closer to the instructors than I had ever felt in an on-site college class. Instead of a once a week intense three-hour session, I received feedback and messages in smaller sound bites. I felt like I was able to converse more with my professors, thereby enhancing my learning experience.
At the same time I was taking these classes I had a classroom with five computers. I could immediately apply information I was learning in my classes. In addition, I created other learning experiences using computers for small groups of students. I discussed this with other teachers in my online classes.
So, I went fishing and I was hooked on the quality of my own online classroom experiences and the power of computers as a motivating tool in the classroom. The classes paid big dividends.
