Comments on: Online Fear of an Online Education Pioneer http://www.achieveyourcareer.com/blog/online-fear/ A discussion about online degrees and your career Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:21:06 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.5 By: Pamela Gustafson http://www.achieveyourcareer.com/blog/online-fear/#comment-2363 Pamela Gustafson Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:26:01 +0000 http://www.achieveyourcareer.com/blog/?p=139#comment-2363 Thanks for responding to my post. I would love to teach online at the elementary and middle school level. I agreed with everything you said. I am using a combination of online/onsite education with my middle school special education students, using the MOODLE platform. Moodle is becoming a prominent online platform used by school districts, and happens to be the platform my school district uses. I spent a lot of time teaching Moodle to my students before allowing them to do their assignments on the platform. I also spent a lot of time "nagging" them to submit their assignments properly and to edit and revise their work. This was an advantage to a combination of online/onsite platform. Thanks for responding to my post. I would love to teach online at the elementary and middle school level. I agreed with everything you said. I am using a combination of online/onsite education with my middle school special education students, using the MOODLE platform. Moodle is becoming a prominent online platform used by school districts, and happens to be the platform my school district uses. I spent a lot of time teaching Moodle to my students before allowing them to do their assignments on the platform. I also spent a lot of time “nagging” them to submit their assignments properly and to edit and revise their work. This was an advantage to a combination of online/onsite platform.

]]> By: C. East http://www.achieveyourcareer.com/blog/online-fear/#comment-2351 C. East Sat, 29 Nov 2008 05:34:40 +0000 http://www.achieveyourcareer.com/blog/?p=139#comment-2351 Significant topic, I believe. Although my personal experience has only been from the "teaching" end, I have taught online courses at both the high school and community college levels. As a teacher, online is more time consuming and more difficult in some ways ~ especially to motivate marginal students, but the benefits completely outweigh the negatives in my book! No commuting, few faculty meetings (yea!), budget issues for classroom fairly nonexistant! One area that is often (in my experience)overlooked is the complexity of the online software that various schools choose to use. I have used the blackboard platform, and others that a consortium of schools created themselves. Each term I had to update and learn new software as the schools changed willy-nilly to save money... this total lack of consistency is difficult for students. They learn how to navigate one program only to find the next term there is another to learn! In this same thought, it has also been my experience that many counselors ask students if they are computer savvy before signing off on an online course, and they *think* they are if they can send an email or chat or surf the web. Too many students actually have little experience in how to actually get a file to their instructor in a readable format that can be opened! I know this sounds weird in our generally tech savvy world, but students may be great at playing online games,surfing, sending chats, photos... but producing an academic work, actually "using" spell check and submitting in a proper format is something they need to know PRIOR to enrolling in an online course. Every school should offer a short course on how to take an online class! Review the software their students will use and explain how to use the basic functions. Self discipline is an absolute requisite for online education from both sides of the "desk". Schools often ignore basics and "assume" to much to the detriment of students. Significant topic, I believe. Although my personal experience has only been from the “teaching” end, I have taught online courses at both the high school and community college levels. As a teacher, online is more time consuming and more difficult in some ways ~ especially to motivate marginal students, but the benefits completely outweigh the negatives in my book! No commuting, few faculty meetings (yea!), budget issues for classroom fairly nonexistant!

One area that is often (in my experience)overlooked is the complexity of the online software that various schools choose to use. I have used the blackboard platform, and others that a consortium of schools created themselves. Each term I had to update and learn new software as the schools changed willy-nilly to save money… this total lack of consistency is difficult for students. They learn how to navigate one program only to find the next term there is another to learn!

In this same thought, it has also been my experience that many counselors ask students if they are computer savvy before signing off on an online course, and they *think* they are if they can send an email or chat or surf the web. Too many students actually have little experience in how to actually get a file to their instructor in a readable format that can be opened! I know this sounds weird in our generally tech savvy world, but students may be great at playing online games,surfing, sending chats, photos… but producing an academic work, actually “using” spell check and submitting in a proper format is something they need to know PRIOR to enrolling in an online course. Every school should offer a short course on how to take an online class! Review the software their students will use and explain how to use the basic functions. Self discipline is an absolute requisite for online education from both sides of the “desk”. Schools often ignore basics and “assume” to much to the detriment of students.

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