reading 15 Theme 7:A Focus on the Teacher

Reading 15: First reading on Theme 7: A Focus on the teacher

Sheridan, R. (2006). Reducing the Online Instructor's Workload. Educause Quarterly. 29. (3). Downloaded on 29 August 2008 from http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/ReducingtheOnlineInstruct/39983

As a face-to-face teacher, I have found maintaining good online communication and "marking" essays online to be more time-consuming than the same activities in face-to-face situations, so the title of this particular article caught my eye.

Sheridan writes from practical experience, as he is experienced in both hybrid and full online courses. As introduction, he deals with the pros and cons of online teaching - the advantages of self-paced, flexible, preferences for written vs spoken communication and geographical freedom as opposed to the disadvantages for both student and teacher of mastering a technological learning curve, lack of direct contact or support personnel, difficulty of recognising and understanding drop-outs, internet connection issues and on-screen reading.

His advice for managing time includes several practical pointers:

• Automate parts of the course – use online development tools for frequently asked questions, self-correcting quizzes, etc
• Minimise e-mail questions by creating a “what’s new” section to get students to focus on new assignments or learning materials without reviewing the whole course
• Design courses in dreamweaver or another HTML program that allows updating of several pages with one correction
• Organise a support group (e.g. students) to help support when there are technical problems
• Design courses with an awareness of assessment workload. Avoid instructor burnout by reducing workload through peer, computer or self-assessment options or group assignments.
• Attempt to have administrative staff deal with certain aspects of the course and encourage experienced students to support others.
• Communicate early on how best to use the course; encourage continuous feedback to be responsive to needs.

He concludes with the reminder that the students’ satisfaction with the online experience and whether they learnt the required material determines the success.

Question and discussion:

This paper offers little new after my readings on design. However a problem was highlighted in a caption to an illustration in the PDF version of the article – “High-enrollment courses especially may need to use fewer personalized grading assignments or high-tech features”. Bearing in mind that personalised grading offers good feedback, does this not compromise the learning? Secondly, should the “high-tech features” not be included only for the purposes of enhancing learning or easing things for the instructor? If they do not serve at least one of these, they would be no loss…but if they serve the purpose, their absence could lower the quality of the course and damage the instructor’s sense of efficacy in teaching.