Where’s the Teach?: Professors in the Online Classroom
Posted by Jennifer Buchholz on February 16th, 2009
Considering that I have been an adjunct faculty member for several universities throughout my time as a student at Capella, I will likely be a pretty tough judge on the subject of the faculty.
In my work, I’m required to be online 5 out of 7 days a week, to respond to student questions within 24 hours, and to engage in substantive conversations with the students. My job is more of a facilitator than a “teacher” but through the facilitated discussions, the students learn and grow.
As a student, I found faculty to be basically absent. In 90% of my courses, faculty were not actively visible in the online classroom or the discussions. They took exceptionally long to respond to questions. They did not add to the material or bring their experiences or expertise to the discussion. This is not to question their qualifications, but to recognize they did not really bring much to the table in terms of our learning. There was 10% of the faculty I had that were excellent, but they were so outnumbered.
Rarely was additional material suggested to help the student achieve the course goals. Considering this was a graduate level program, students should be self-sufficient learners, but some support from the faculty would have been appreciated.
Tags: instructors
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This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Professors in the Online Classroom, Student Voices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
