Not as easy as you think.

Online education is not as easy as what people might think. There is a lot of time and effort required by the student as well as the teacher. As a student you actually spend more time participating than a student that attends class once or twice a week.

A student that attends a traditional class will read the chapters, study and take the test. The rest of the time is free time. If it is a group project, they meet in person, many times right before the class.

Online courses require you to go online, go to the websites that are listed as resources or read the required books or articles. You also have to post on discussion boards. Many online classes also meet online. Then there is the research that is required for papers and projects. You have the same amount of work that is required in a traditional class as well as the work that is unique to online courses.

Preparing online courses is also different. You need to keep in mind that your students are accessing everything via the internet. Everything must be kept in small chunks: because not every student is going to have high speed connection and you will lose there attention if they have to keep scrolling or listening. You must make sure that all directions are clear and explicit because they can't just stay late after class for clarification.

Also, do you use multimedia? You want students to be interested, but you shouldn't add it just to add it. It doesn't do any good to say that you have all the bells and whistles added to your class if it serves no purpose.

Group projects must also be taken into consideration. Who do you group together? What is the assignment? What do you want the outcome to be? Something that would be normally assigned to a traditional class won't neccissarily work online.

Designing for an online class requires thought and training. Taking certification classes should be required for anyone wanting to create or transfer a traditional class to an online format. Online classes are being taken more and more by students who find that they fit into their lives better that traditional classes and theses classes should be challenging and enriching.

To boil it all down, online classes are not an easy A. They require time and effort to take and create. I have come to realize that I have a lot to learn and a long way to go.

Online Learning and Training

My perception of online courses is based on the 3 courses that I have taken. The first 2 courses were Photoshop and Fireworks. I struggled with those courses because they are so hands on and I could not get answers to my questions right away. Some of the students got very frustrated because the instructor didn't always understand the question (combination of the student perhaps not wording the question correctly and the instructor possibly trying to give a quick answer). I finished the courses, but did not feel that I really learned anything. The other course I took was about the Americans with Disabilities Act. I was very pleased with this course. We had scheduled discussion times, so there was interaction between the students and the instructor. When the course was done I felt like I had a better understanding and could put what I had learned to use at work.

Based on those courses I know that there are good online courses as well as bad courses. I will be cautious as to what courses I would take online.

What I hope to learn:
I hope to learn how to create an online course that doesn't leave the students feeling frustrated and confused. I currently teach workshops on: Excel, Blogs, RSS Feeds, and creating webpages. I want to be able to create courses that the students can access 24/7. I want to create learning objects for using our databases, etc. But I want to do a good job, I want students to finish the course and feel like they have accomplished something.