Taking online courses is a significantly different experience that face to face learning in a number of ways. Take, for example, the fact that I have been in the program here at SJSU for three years, and have still never been to the campus. A university campus contains a wealth of resources that students are able to take advantage of, which online students often cannot. During my undergraduate experience, I liked going to the gym, joining intramural sports teams, or watching performances. The educational experience becomes central to a student's life. An online education is designed so that students are able to continue the course of their lives while obtaining an education. For this reason, I would hypothesize that the majority of online students are there to take their education seriously. Nonetheless, it seems as if there is a large part of the educational experience that is lacking. To me, that would be the submersive environment of traditional higher education.
One of the main challenges to an online education is the high level of self-responsibility that accompanies student learning. Students who are unable to be motivated self-starters will be unable to succeed in this type of environment. Perhaps this is one of the skills that online learning fosters, but more likely, those students are are not self-starters will not be able to obtain an online education.
The online education I am receiving is more collaboratively based than any classes I have ever taken. Is this the nature of online learning, or is it merely the current educational practice? I'm not sure. What has gone along with this, is a plethora of collaboratively created online content. The nature of collaboration evolves in the face of virtual education. As we are working with online documents, wikis, blogs, etc., we have to learn to become used to publishing unfinished work so that others are able to collaborate on that project. It is frightening to publish work that you know is unfinished. It has been challenging learning to let go of the insecurity regarding that experience. An interesting byproduct of that concept is the evolution in my personal idea of what constituted completed work. In the past, once a paper was printed out, it was finished forever. Now, using collaborative online tools, I find myself rethinking choices and reflecting on ways that my projects can be revisited and reworked. Assignments that have been published online can be drawn from and expanded upon to find new life. For example, I have begun sharing my tween book blog with students as an opportunity to teach them to write their own book reviews.
Ultimately, each teacher is different and each class is a unique experience. Online students, like students who attend physical classes, must learn the distinct style of their professors.
"Students must repeat the acclimation process for each Web-based course at the beginning of a semester" (Orellana, Hudgins, & Simonson, 2009, p. 354). As we are unable to see the people around us, this acclimation process makes the beginning of each semester a slightly uncomfortable process.
Orellana, A., Hudgins, T., & Simonson, M. (2009). The perfect online course. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing, Inc.
I had not thought about the issue surrounding publishing unfinished work - very interesting.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't considered this either, and I think it's a great insight. I definitely have issues with "letting go" of unfinished work, but I think that the blogging in particular ( I don't have any other online presence besides this one) has forced me to be more clear in my own thinking and, hopefully, my written expression and reasoning as well.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with you in regard to the lack of submersion/immersion in an entirely online-based education. This hasn't been an issue for me personally, but I can understand that this could seem like a definite absence for many students.
Thanks for this thoughtful post!
Your entry this week raised several interesting ideas, but one that stood out was your discussion regarding collaboration and turning in assignments that are only partially completed. I have struggled with this same "insecurity", and it is only after several semesters of collaboration that I am more acclimated to learning this way. For me, some of this may be attributed to my need at times to control the cycle of a project. I liked also that you acknowledged the evolution in your concept of what constitutes completed work. I find myself returning to completed assignments, and reworking them into new projects.
ReplyDeleteOther than the course I took for my special education credential (face to face classes), I too have found the online courses from SLIS to be more collaborative in nature than courses that I took for my undergrad work. As a teacher, I have seen the pendulum swing towards much more collaboration in the K-12 classroom so I would hypothesize that this is the current educational practice. I think though it is also one of the ways instructors are trying to foster more of a connected feeling between students who never meet face to face and would not really need to communicate with each other unless there were specific assignment expectations, such as discussion threads or other collaborative projects.
ReplyDeleteJust as the others have commented, I too have struggled with the need to share my work with other students in the unfinished state and hope that they realize that it is part of the process as we work together to complete the project. I think the statement you made about the types of learners who utilize online learning is dead-on; "I would hypothesize that the majority of online students are there to take their education seriously." Not only do they tend to be self-starters, self-motivated and more serious students, but also probably used to succeeding in education. This may be a driving force for the difficulty in letting go and sharing or publishing work in the unfinished stages. This type of student is used to doing something well and producing quality work. When that is your expectation of yourself it is hard to not push in a group setting to control the quality, or perhaps the "cycle of a project" as Mike mentioned in his response.