General questions about online teaching

I teach a class on how to use Blackboard for the @ONE project,  and recently a participant asked the following questions on the "Discussion Grading and Help" forum. I liked her question and decided to blog her questions and my answers:

In general, does teaching online pay the same as teaching face-to-face classes?

• In my district there is no pay differential for online teaching.

Where are good places to look for openings regarding online teaching positions?

• Almost all California community colleges offer online courses, and the best place I know to find jobs in this system is the CCC Job Registry.

Is it hard to find an online teaching position?

• The difficulty depends on the institution.

Does the @one certification cover all levels of online teaching or just college? Is there anyone out there teaching online classes other than college?

• The standards for the @ONE certification program are based on standards originally written by the International Association for K-12 Online Learning. More information is on the @ONE web site.

Do you find online teaching requires more work, less work or the same work as face-to-face classes? In what way?

• In my experience online teaching requires a lot more work initially, as there is a lot less room for error than in a face-to-face class. If I screw up in class, I can let my students know immediately (or the next time we meet) about my mistake. If I screw up online, I might alienate a student who might decide not to log in again. The efficiency gained from experience makes it less work eventually, and the freedom to schedule the time I work helps make up for the extra time required.

What are some of the things you would do differently, if you could teach your first online class again?

• I would spend more time teaching in a web enhanced or hybrid mode before teaching my first fully online class.

Do any of you do group work with your online classes?

• Yes, I teach a class on online student success and give students a group assignment to give them the experience of working on a team they do not get to see in person.

My answers are of course based on my experience, and I do not include hearsay from other colleges and districts. Many institutions make for many situations, and I expect the answers to differ in other places.

Teaching a larger class and managing enrollment

This semester I was asked if I was willing to teach a larger history class. Normally our history classes are capped at 45, but I can earn extra pay if I am willing to teach 70. The trick is the class has to reach that number, else my pay does not increase. So this class I hustled for students to enroll. I emailed the counselors asking for them to refer students, and I also emailed the other history instructors telling them to send students they could not accommodate my way. Before the cap was raised I already had a wait list of 18, so I would not have had to worry about finding students to enroll.

Email works for students

I am fortunate to be teaching a class on how to use a learning management system that has students and teachers enrolled. One of the discussion topics in the class encourages participants to share how they use the various communication tools available. I saw a quote from a student about email that grabbed my attention:

"When I get an email from a professor, I feel like inside there will be some important secret message that we all have to know in order to get through with class. While I pay attention to other forms of communication, emails definitely get my fullest attention."

YouTube and Webcam for instructor presence

I post a weekly video for my fully online classes to help establish instructor presence, which is one of those best practices for distance education. Initially I thought it would be tough to do but the use of a webcam and YouTube's easy basic editing tools make it a breeze. The caption tools in YouTube are especially useful for short videos, which include the ones I use. For longer videos, especially instructional ones (like the one embedded on this page), I use Camtasia Studio.

Discussion grades

A student expressed confusion when she saw her points for a discussion topic were 10/10 but I said that there could be 20 points per topic with a maximum of 80 for all discussion (8 topcis total). I replied:

Each of the 8 unit discussions is worth 10 points for a total of 80. I do not want to devalue the other assignments that make up the class grade, so I leave at 80 the maximum points that can be earned through discussion. However, I recognize that some students will find certain topics more interesting and I also want to encourage communication among students, so I award points for quality responses to what our classmates write. These are extra credit within that discussion topic with a maximum of 10 extra credit points, so the score for an individual topic can be up to 20/10. Therefore it is possible to earn all 80 of the discussion points possible in just 4 discussion topics.

Wording for Quizzes

I teach a professional development course and use quizzes to encourage reading and reinforce learning. Since my "students" are peers and at times feel uncomfortable with being graded, I like to set them at ease with some wording in the description of the quiz. The quizzes are set to allow unlimited attempts and each question's feedback shows where to find the correct answer.

The purpose of the quiz is for you to review some of the topics covered in this lesson to validate your understanding of its terms and tools. It is not meant to provoke anxiety but instead be a guide. Take the quiz as many times as you wish

GaGA Group Site

Our district has a Google Apps account, and last semester I used the Google Sites tool to conduct a group assignment. On the first day of the class I asked the students to pick which of the course questions most interested them, and I used this to divide them into groups. I created a site for each group and assigned the group's members as editors of the site.