Still here from the Oregon coast, and I’m happily returning to my blogging duties as the beach here is more fog and rocks than sun and sand. I must admit that I’m feeling incredibly guilty and somewhat nervous on vacation right now since I’m supposed to begin teaching my very first online class here in a little over a week (and, it’s a five-week summer class, which has never been taught before at our university—so I suppose that’s adding to my twitchiness about the subject). On the trip over I managed to sketch out a rough plan of due dates and assignments, so I do feel fairly confident now that I can actually cover the material I had hoped to. But, I’m still left with the task of building my online classroom. The article that came my way today, I suppose, was either meant to alleviate or possibly aggravate my concerns about this upcoming class. Someone sure is screwing with me…, so, here it is folks:
Article 5:
Darrington, Anjanette. “Six Lessons in e-Learning: Strategies and Support for Teachers New to Online Environments.” TETYC 35.4 (2008): 416-421. Print.
The title says it all: Darrington offers six pointers of things she learned after teaching her online class for the first time. This isn’t the first article like this that I’ve read—it seems that after teaching online for the first time, it’s common for teachers to want or need to share their experiences as to make the first experience of others less painful (a running narrative, really, in the field of Online Writing Instruction). In fact, my team (Jen, Steph, and Jill) and I just returned from the Computers and Writing Conference, and we presented about our online writing instruction training program that we developed through a SBOE Technology Incentive Grant, and the program was designed to better prepare new and experienced online writing instructors (that goes above and beyond the training provided by the university). I was very fortunate to be a member of this team with Jen, Steph, and Jill because they did in fact have many years of experience teaching online. I, in fact, have none. I became a member of our team in an earlier iteration of our grant plan, which eventually shifted over time, leaving the duties I was originally planned for irrelevant. I stayed on the team, though, as the “technology person” (which, by the way, is absurd in about a hundred different ways as I find myself frequently shaking my fist at my computer, swearing at it for its misgivings). Anyhow, I stayed on the team, and we just wrapped up our year-long training program. And, now I’m planning to teach my first online class, and even with all of the training I’ve had (and provided) and with the support I have (which many online teachers, I’ve come to find out, have little to none), I’m still incredibly nervous.
Darrington’s six pointers didn’t offer any new bits of wisdom for me because of this recent year-long experience I’ve had, but I’ll lay them out here for you here just in case:
1. Students aren’t as tech savvy as some people think. (I already know this of course, but the one thing I’ve learned about teaching online is that students sign up for these classes for a zillion reasons, and one of these reasons is that they lead hectic, complicated lives—they don’t often even consider the technological requirements necessary for taking an online class.)
2. Teachers have to work harder at building community. (This has been of recent discussion between me and my grant team, so I’ll come back to it below.)
3. Teaching online takes more time. (I’ll also discuss this below.)
4. J doesn’t replace real smiles. (True-ish. In our training program we’ve spent a great deal of time training our participants on how to create an online presence, so that our students can recognize that we are living, breathing human beings—something we do take for granted in our f2f classes. Better technology and web applications that have come out since this article was written can make a huge difference.)
5. Student satisfaction is key. (Is this really a point that is specific to online learning? I don’t think so.)
6. Because teaching online takes more time (as Darrington claims earlier), contingent faculty are more vulnerable to exploitation because even though it takes more time, they are not paid more. (I’ll come back to this below, as well.)
Back to the issue of community, we’ve talked about this a lot because it was much discussed at the conference we just returned from. Writing instructors tend to emphasize the necessity of community, and I’m one of them. My go-to line is, “If they won’t talk to each other about the movie they saw over the weekend, they sure as hell won’t talk to each other about their essays.” I spend a great deal of time in many of my classes to actively build community, particularly in English 90 because I often get to work with the same students for 101 and 102 as well, so they need to know me and each other really well. The time I spend is super valuable, and by the time 101 begins, they are comfortable with each other and me, and it pays off in really big ways. After the conference, I posed a question to my team: “how much community does an online student need?” After all, they’re not in the class to discover their latest and greatest BFF; in fact, their hectic lives probably couldn’t even accommodate another obligation such as that. The reality is, the majority of our online students are there to complete their core credits (as I’m only addressing the classes that I’ll be teaching—first-year writing classes), and being that my upcoming summer class is only five-weeks long, I’m assuming my students are trying to complete these core credits as fast as they can. I know that a certain amount of community is necessary, and we discussed how to accomplish this in our training program, but we also decided this is one area that we can improve on, as instructors and as trainers. I’ll keep thinking on it…
Another point that needs a bit of discussion is that Darrington states that online teaching takes more time. This is a tricky subject. Teaching online for the first time takes a considerable amount of time, no doubt, but so does any class that you’re teaching for the first time. The first time I taught English 303: The Theory and Practice of Tutoring Writing, I poured myself into that task (and, this was one of the last tasks that I really tackled—see my first post for more info). I’m teaching 303 again in the fall, and it won’t take a fraction of the time I spent the first round. That’s just how it goes. I do think teaching online takes a different kind of time. There is definitely more front loading, and it is a really bad idea to try and build a class one day at a time (which many people are able to do well f2f). The more you teach online, the better you get at it—the better you get at it, the less time it’ll take. We recommend that our students block out time for their online classes, just as they would their f2f classes. Online learning cannot happen on coffee breaks at work. I would argue the same goes for teaching these classes.
Last point: adjuncts are exploited. That’s not new, now is it? I will say that online teaching does align nicely in some ways for contingent folks—the flexibility of online teaching is quite appealing. I’ve thought a lot over the past year about the differences between being a full-time, benefit-earning member of the department versus being an adjunct. Being full-time is wonderful, and I am thankful every day for my job—it really is the best job in the world. But it does come at a cost. More stress, more meetings, more responsibilities, more meetings, more, more, more (and definitely more meetings). I don’t mean to romanticize the life of an adjunct—it’s just different. I suppose it’s kind of like being a hobo teacher, riding the rails from class to class, or school to school—not tied down. Online teaching is just another rail to jump on. Of course these hobo teachers have to pay a price, too—like frostbite and scurvy.
Ultimately, teaching online can take as much or as little time as someone wants to devote—no different than a face-to-face class.
Enough for now—I better go spend some time planning my class instead of whining about it. More tomorrow!
mk
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