GETTING STARTED in DISTANCE TEACHING & LEARNING
Copyright © 2005-6, Henry J. Sage
It all started, or perhaps I should say ended, with the
Springfield Interchange in Springfield, Virginia, one of the major intersections on the East Coast. Other factors went into my decision to retire from the
classroom, but I had been commuting through Springfield for 30 years, and
enough was finally enough. Since I did not really want to stop teaching, it
was logical to make the move to distance learning, especially since I had no
qualms with the technology component, as I had been using the World Wide Web to
augment my classroom teaching for almost 10 years.
The transition was not easy, as I had expected. I taught my
first NVCC distance class through teh NVCC Extended Learning Institute while still in the classroom, hoping to be able to make some
kind of comparison, but too many variables were involved for any meaningful
interpretation. In any case, I forged ahead, trying to heed advice from
colleagues who had been teaching online for some time, reading books and
articles on how to be a successful distance teacher, picking up what I could at
League for Innovation Conferences, and consulting with the very fine ELI staff.
My first surprise was discovering how rapidly my distance
courses filled. It had been a long time since I had more than 40 or 45
students in a classroom on campus, but the first time I set a limit of 84 (for
which double pay is awarded) the class filled several weeks before registration
ended.
The second interesting discovery, not really a surprise, was
how far and wide my students were spread. From soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, to embassy personnel in Europe, to students at universities and other
locations all over the country, I quickly saw that my audience was by no means
limited to Northern Virginia. That meant two things: First, I had to consider
what resources I would require my students to obtain, and second, I had to
prepare them for the fact that since monitored assessments are required, they
needed to be cognizant of how to arrange that for themselves. The second
problem was easy since distance learning is now everywhere, and most colleges
and libraries are prepared to serve as proctor sites.
The first problem was solved by the State Department, more
specifically the USIS. When I first started using the Web, I discovered that University of Groningen in the Netherlands has a wonderful collection of resources on American
history, and among those resources was a brief American history text, the
“Outline of American History,” which I traced back to the State Department. It
was created by the USIS in 1994 as a source of information on America for people in other lands. Consultation with the copyright division of the Department of
State revealed that the text is a public domain document, and although it was
never intended for use in United States, there was no reason why it could not be
used in an online course.
To supplement the “Outline of American History,” I converted
my 20 years of teaching notes into Web-compatible format, and the students had,
along with the hundreds of history documents available on the Web, a full
American history text which costs them nothing except an Internet connection, a
printer, paper and ink cartridges—and it’s available anywhere.
As a recent article published by one of our colleagues in
the Washington Post magazine pointed out, distance teaching is not for
everyone. Neither, apparently, is distance learning appropriate for all
students. All the same, with rising gas prices, no end in sight to traffic
congestion, and the fact that more and more Americans are using the Internet
for everything from communicating to shopping to banking, it is likely that the
demand for distance courses will continue to accelerate. For students who are
not sufficiently self-motivated to complete a distance course on their own, I
first point out to them that it is no disgrace to recognize that they are not
suited for this environment; but I also point out that if they are ever in a
job situation which requires working from a distance or from home, they should
recall their experience with distance courses and take that into account.
For colleagues who are considering joining in distance
learning environment I would offer the following suggestions.
- Don't rush in. Or, as colleague once suggested, don't dive
into the pool unless you are sure it's full of water. Ease yourself into
the process by starting with one course, perhaps expanding it to a larger
course in the second semester, and adding additional courses once you have
the bugs worked out. And make no mistake, no matter how competent you
are, you will find bugs. Dr. Randy Bass, a professor of American Studies
at Georgetown, suggested some years ago that one consider a five-semester
model when moving a course from the classroom to online. Now in my fifth
semester of distance teaching, I endorse that idea. Although many of the
kinks are gone from my courses, bugs still find their way in. (Just as
they did in the classroom, of course—you know, the student who gets up and
goes to the cafeteria for french fries in the middle of class and then
wonders why you are upset.)
- Remember the three basic rules of distance learning:
communication, communication, communication. We take a lot of things for
granted in the classroom. For instance, if there is a typo or a wrong
date in our syllabus, we point it out in class and make any other
necessary adjustments as we go along. I used to take perhaps an hour in
the first class every semester simply going through the syllabus and
requirements. I still have to do that in distance learning, but obviously
it has to be done differently. I now set aside the first week of each new
class for them to print out and read all the support material for the
course.
- Be prepared to check e-mail more or less daily. It is
worth pointing out that while we may send our e-mail in a timely manner,
we have no way of knowing when or even if students are going to read it.
The college requires that we communicate “official” information to
students through the VCCS e-mail system. All well and good, but at least
three quarters of my students also use some other e-mail, which is
probably easier for them to access from home or work. While we may
suggest that they check their college e-mail twice a week, many obviously
do not, and it certainly cannot be depended upon for important
announcements that need quick response. I use a form at the beginning of
each semester to collect students’ alternate e-mail addresses—if what I
need to send is “official” information (and most is not), I tell them to
check their college email.
- Be wary of mass e-mail. I do not use mass e-mailing to
communicate with students. Many anti-spam programs will sidetrack any
e-mail with more than a handful of addressees. If for some reason I need
to send particular information to more than one or two students at a time,
I send the message to perhaps half a dozen, then open it from my sent
items folder, resend it to another group, and so on.
- Learn the tools. Course management systems such as
Blackboard are certainly helpful, but they are far from perfect.
Frustration caused me to investigate other means of delivering online
materials such as Macromedia Authorware, but in the end it wasn't worth
the effort. The latest version of Blackboard is a significant step
forward over previous versions, but there is still room for improvement.
Like a number of colleagues, I use Blackboard only for announcements,
testing and discussion and point the students to my web site for
everything else.
- Plan constantly, and think about ways to make your
distance teaching more efficient. That may require an investment in
things such as rubber stamps for return address, plenty of printer ink so
that you don't have to go to a campus to print student papers, and so on.
Sure it costs, but so did commuting. I estimate that since I no longer
commute 16 miles four or five times per week to my campus, I am saving at
least $1500 a year, not to mention a lot of time.
- Depend on the ELI staff—they know their stuff! Talk with
the ELI staff about course completion deadlines, etc. Distance learning
has evolved, and our expectations must evolve as well. College guidelines
suggest that we allow an extra semester for students to complete distance
courses, but after three semesters I decided that was far too long. When
the course officially ended and extensions were granted, students who were
allotted extra time did practically nothing as a rule until the next
deadline arrived, whenever that happened to be. (I should not have been
surprised—incompletes awarded on campus tended to turn out the same way.)
I have now shortened all my deadlines to a maximum of four weeks after the
course ends, and am considering shortening that further in the hope that
most students will finish their courses on time and before the next
semester begins. I firmly believe that being stricter with students is actually
doing them a favor—they have told me as much.
- Establish patterns for yourself and your students. I post
announcements in Blackboard every weekend to cover whatever is going on
during the following week. If nothing special is happening, I direct them
to various resources or make other planning suggestions.
- Don't count exclusively on e-mail. ELI does a mail out at
the beginning of the semester, and I follow with my own. Several weeks
later when their first writing project is approaching, I send another
snail-mail reminder for them to get working.
- Don't worry about voicemail. In five semesters with well
over 500 students I have had only two or three students who needed to talk
to me by phone. It was just hand-holding, and the ELI staff and counselors
do that very well. If you teach foreign languages or otherwise need to use
voice communication, excellent technologies are available for support.
(The same is true in disciplines with special needs, such as mathematics
and the sciences.)
- Accept the fact that not all of your students will
finish. Give them a little slack, but not enough rope with which to hang
themselves. When they tell you that they find that distance learning is
not for them, congratulate them on having learned a valuable lesson about
themselves, withdraw them from the course and wish them luck in their
future studies.
- Don’t make assumptions about individual students until you
get to know them. I use an introductory forum and an information form to
facilitate that process, but there are still surprises. In the classroom
you can guess that the lady in the front row is probably a grandmother,
but when you first meet her in an online course, for all you know she
might be a teeny-bopper.
One of the little secrets about classroom teaching that I
have discovered in retrospect is that we assume that because students are
sitting in the classroom with their eyes open as we lecture, there is learning
going on. It ain't necessarily so. Since everything that the students have to
do in distance learning is more or less proactive, they seem to go about it
with greater vigor. I am greatly impressed the quality of the work I have received
from many of my distance students; on average, I have to say that in many
respects it exceeds whatever I got in the classroom.
I miss the classroom, no question. But I am sure that I
communicate with my students one-on-one, directly, more than I ever did on
campus. I am also convinced that the model for the future of education is
distance learning—I am not sorry I got into it. Maybe I just waited too long.
One last suggestion, especially if your significant other is
still working outside the home, and working alone at home can be lonely. But as
Bess Truman once said, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog!” I did.
It helps.
Sage History Home | Academic American Home | Updated
December 10, 2005