Teaching an Online Class

By

Karen J. Louis

Approximately one year ago, I was asked to teach my first online course.  I was quite apprehensive about this whole new teaching/learning concept.  Was I prepared to put my lectures online and how would I get the students to interact with me online?

After researching information about online learning, I decided this cannot be too difficult.  My first consideration was exactly what type of learning environment do I need to create so my students will be interactive. Interactive learning can take place in a variety of ways in an online classroom--between instructor and student, between student and the learning materials, among the students, or between student and guest lecturer.  It will be, however, the instructor’s responsibility to design a course that provides the students with the varied formats, and create a classroom that has an active, student-centered environment. (Schweizer, 1999)

One thing I new for sure, I needed to get to know my students and I wanted my students to have a positive learning experience.  First, I wrote a “welcome letter” to the students introducing myself to them.  I included information about my teaching experiences, my family, my hobbies, and my college degree. In my traditional classes, I always start off by introducing myself and then having the students fill out note cards with their background information.  I do this to personalize my classes so I felt this was necessary in my online class too.  So in place of the note cards, my students were asked to reply on the discussion board with a note about themselves.  They are to include information as to where they are from, what their major is, whether they have a nickname, and anything they would like to add about themselves.  I really feel this gives the student a sense of belonging to the class.  The students might even share a picture of themselves if they wanted to.

            Using Web-CT as my delivery system (because this is the platform used at my college), I added my syllabus as a link for my students.  The syllabus included all the essential information about the course including the course description, course policies and evaluation policies.  I found at this point that providing the students with a least two links to each page was very helpful.  My students had the link underneath the course menu plus a link with an icon to access each page.  In traditional classes, I give my students a class calendar so in my online course I filled out the class calendar contained in Web-CT. With one click, the students can see what is due that week for their homework assignment.

            Now that I had my syllabus and my welcome letter in place, I needed to begin with the course content pages.  Each week, I uploaded my lectures for the students to read along with their weekly assignments.  As this particular course was a course on learning how to use PowerPoint, I would use PowerPoint presentation to deliver some of my lectures.  This served two purposes for me:  1. the students were actually seeing a PowerPoint presentation, so those who were visual learners were seeing what they could do with PowerPoint, and 2. I tried to personalize the presentations so that students felt a sense of belonging to the class.  I also included links to the web about the content in my presentations.  In all my presentations I try to make sure I am teaching to all the different learning styles.  For example, the web sites would be for the Visual/Spatial learner and the textbook and print material for the Verbal/Linguistic learner.

            The students were also required to log in to an online PowerPoint tutorial.  The college purchased the right to use the tutorial and I, as the instructor, had an administrative password to be able to view what lessons my students had completed.  This tutorial was not difficult and it walked the students through the basics of PowerPoint.

            Now that I had two ways of presenting the material, I still needed to make sure my students were involved in the class.  Each week, I would post a discussion question for my students to respond to during the week.  This is called asynchronous learning because there is a delay in the interaction between the student and the teacher or other students. Because I wanted all the students to be involved in this process, I made these discussion postings a requirement as part of their course work grade.

            Yet, I still felt I needed to be communicating with my students individually at least one a week. I wanted my online class to have a friendly and open environment just like in my traditional class.  To show each one of my students that I cared about him or her and wanted him or her to succeed, I would send a personal e-mail each week to all of them. 

            Last, how would I deal with assessments?  I decided because I was teaching PowerPoint, the best assessment would be for my students to submit a PowerPoint presentation on a subject of their choice.  In this way, I felt comfortable that they were doing their own work. Each presentation had to be so many slides long and include a bulleted list of items that they had learned in the PowerPoint lessons.

            At this point, I would like to say, “I did it.  I taught my first online course, and I loved it.”  But with any good teacher, next time I will make quite a few changes to my format.  As technology continues to change, I want to keep up to date on the latest and the greatest ideas to teach my students.  Education for everyone should be a life-long process.

            Let me leave you with one thought.  After I went through all the work of designing this online course, who owns it?