To start this particular educational journey, I took Online Learning: An Overview, and one of our first assignments involved investigating the common myths of online learning as detailed in the "7 Myths About Online Education" article published through U.S. News and World Report.
The two myths I chose to explore border on being contradictory. The first myth states that online courses are easier than traditional face-to-face courses; however, the sixth myth argues that students have no opportunity to meet with their instructors which is a problem because it makes the course more difficult. In my experience, and as indicated by Williams’s use of the word “myth”, neither is true.
The writers and panel members for the article “The Continuing Controversy Over Online Education” certainly agree that online courses and programs are not easier than traditional ones. Many members of the panel discuss the necessity for students in online courses to be highly disciplined and self-motivated. Oddly enough their fears stem, in part from Myth 6 in that they continuously mention the dangers of courses with limited interaction.
The misconception that online students have no opportunity to meet with the instructor correlates to one panel member's concern that the “anonymity of a distance option could be harmful if they have no other contact with a school”. Some people clearly see online courses as a sort of solitary pursuit lacking in any sort of personal connection. While most of the panel members lump student-student and instructor-student interaction together and do not differentiate between synchronous-asynchronous or virtual-in person interaction, one panel member directly addresses the issue of instructor meetings. Appel admits that she believes her students didn’t get the chance to interact with her often enough for help on assignments, and she thinks that “most students would be better off in a program that allows them to see the instructor face-to-face on a weekly basis".
While I firmly believe that the online space offers a variety of communication tools, I also believe that these tools are not used across the board in online education. As the Straightline staff writes, students can now “contact the professor even more directly and in more detail than in a classroom”; however, whether or not professors are offering these opportunities and whether or not students are taking advantage is a different and more compelling question.
If an online course is designed and executed properly, a student should have regular, sustained, and engaging interaction with his/her instructor. Have any of you ever taken a course online where you had little or no interaction with the instructor?
I've taken a number of MOOCs and have loved most of them. I would agree that the biggest problem is "the necessity for students in online courses to be highly disciplined and self-motivated" but I would not agree that interaction with the instructor makes it more difficult. Most online courses offer the opportunity to post questions in any event. As for the motivation part, I also believe that if the instructor is good enough, that part takes care of itself. (In fact, I loved one course so much - Eric Foner on Reconstruction - I took it twice!)
ReplyDeleteI'm with you. I like MOOCs, I do think you have to be self-motivated, and for a student like me, interaction with the instructor isn't really necessary. I think students who are less full-on-nerd than I probably do benefit from such interaction though. I'll have to look up that MOOC!
DeleteI'll have to think about this. I've only taken one MOOC after being in an online course certificate program which had a LOT of collaboration required with peers but not so much the professors. Plus we did have 2 F2F classes to interact with the profs. I dunno. interesting...
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