Apr 23 2012
Comparing and Contrasting F2F Office hours and Online Office hours
I have only taught online courses, so it is hard for me compare and contrast F2F and Online Teaching and Learning. One thing I have been wondering about is Teaching and Learning during Office Hours.
I do not offer traditional office hours for my online courses. Instead I respond to students’ questions through emails within 24 hours. This seems to work out well for most of my online GIScience students as they tend to be independent and comfortable with technology.
But in some cases, on-campus students who self-identify as doing better in a F2F learning environment end up taking my online courses because of their schedules. These students would probably benefit from more than just email interaction.
If the student struggles with email interaction due to poor writing skills, should I encourage them to improve their writing skills?
Learning how to write a good email is a good career skill. For an example, students could learn that to help write a good email they could:
“Start with a subject line that clearly labels the topic, and maybe includes a status category [Info], [Action], [Time Sens] [Low Priority]. Use crisp, muddle-free sentences. If the email has to be longer than five sentences, make sure the first provides the basic reason for writing. Avoid strange fonts and colors.” – The Email Charter (http://www.emailcharter.org/)
Are there other reasons why a student would struggle with email interaction versus F2F interaction for Office Hours? Could they be more visual and want to see things drawn out/shown? What other technologies would be useful for that? For example, with GIS software, would it be better to create a nice video to step them through a series of actions they would need to take to install the GIS software, rather than providing a list of steps?
[I think so, as I have enjoyed the tutorial videos for the "Developing an online class" course.]
Telling students how long you will take to respond to emails is a great practice. We also recommend letting them know how long you’ll take to grade assignments. Knowing what to expect lessons anxiety considerably. New online students, especially, tend to seek reassurances that the electronic classroom is functioning … Maybe we could call that the “Is this thing on?” phenomenon.
When demonstrating software, it is often easier to watch the steps being performed rather than just read the ‘steps’. To that extent, Jing is a great (free) tool for doing short, 5 minute demos. It allows you to do a quick screencast of whatever is on your computer and share it easily with students.
For longer tutorials — or those covering topics that I need to share repeatedly — I use Adobe Captivate. It has a bit of a learning curve, but if you do a lot of demonstrations it’s a great tool. It also has the option of creating simulations. A ‘hands-on’ exercise that allows students to actually click through the steps can really help reinforce a tech concept.
ONLINE WRITING WORKSHOPS v F2F
I haven’t taught a for-credit Writing Workshop, but I have taught many WWs on a volunteer basis. Once again, I have to say that in the past, these WWs seemed very bland and non-interactive. They pretty much were just packet or poem exchanges “enhanced” with comments from Microsoft’s Word program and a comments section at the bottom. So, this led me to believe an online Writing Workshop for college credit would naturally be lacking.
This morning with Shannon was mind-blowing (again). I don’t know if I just ignored technology (I don’t think I did) or thought it didn’t exist (most likely) or wasn’t made aware (likely), but the tools available now make it not only possible, but I’m starting to … see advantages. For instance, I can now use Jing to walk through a poem’s editing and critique in psuedo real-time and post a link. I’ve always wanted to let students see what I was doing when editing poetry, and now I can! Before, I could use a free program to record the actions on the screen, but without narration, it was as close to useless as you could get.
If OSU gives instructors credits for compensation, I think I’ll start a degree in whatever it is Shannon does…miracles?
–Tim Black