Life Outside of the Classroom: Interaction with Faculty Members
Posted by Jeff Davis on April 1st, 2009
I believe that the overall communication and interaction between faculty and students in an online environment is necessary in order for the online education to be successful. While at the University of Phoenix, interaction with the faculty members was actually quite easy for me outside of the classroom. Since the student-faculty ratio was so low, I had no problems in understanding the course work and in reaching the faculty if necessary…especially after class. This is typically not the case in a more traditional classroom setting where the student-faculty ratio is normally quite high.
The interaction experience with faculty members was much different in an online school than in a traditional one and partially due to the fact that you just cannot simply walk in to a faculty member’s classroom or office when you are attending school in a virtual environment. Based on my experience at the University of Phoenix, I have found that the online faculty members seem to be much easier to contact outside of the classroom. Not only does the student-faculty ratio play a factor, but it could also have something to do with the number of contact methods available as compared to those in a traditional school. In my online learning experience, I always had the faculty member’s home phone number and multiple email addresses along with the best times they could be reached. I found their response times and availability to be excellent. They really did make it quite simple to interact with them outside of the classroom.
This was not the case when I attended a traditional school. Most of the faculty there were difficult to get in touch with outside of the classroom. For example, an email to a faculty member might go unnoticed for days, the faculty member might not be in the classroom or office, and often the only phone number that students had was their school office line. Not to mention that if you tried to interact with them on a weekend, you might as well forget about it because they just did not make themselves available for you and that is really the biggest difference. The online faculty members make themselves readily available for the students. The interaction between students and faculty members in the online environment was far superior in my opinion.
