Paying For Individualized Learning Online

Paying For Individualized Learning Online

There are a lot of institutions that believe that going online is a way to save money and enable larger than normal classes.  This flies in the face of the move in elementary and secondary school to individualize learning.  The problem is that few instructors understand or are willing to take the time to invidualize learning online because they are paid so little to begin with and then it requires a lot of effort and time to help the students, one on one, with their learning problems. I had never thought about it quite this way until yesterday when I used WhatsApp to communicate with each of the members of the class separately about their progress on the current assignment and sent an e-mail to all of them about the timelines to the end of the term and what their last assignment will be like.  I also marked very carefully two assignments.  That took me a couple of hours and that is not a small amount of time. When I used to use Blackboard and had ongoing discussion threads for my classes, I often tried to read every posting and  made sure that I responded to as many as possible and certainly at least every so often to each individual class member.  That took hours and I usually felt that I knew what time I was putting in to the discussions but didn't know to what extent my students appreciated what I was doing. I certainly know that I was the only instructor / faculty member doing what I was doing. I used to tell my students that, at some point in their careers, they for sure would be teaching online because it exactly helps us individualize instruction and communicate with our students 24 / 7.  It was a lot of work, but I think they were acquiring skills and a voice online without even trying.  The real benefit though is the ability to invidualize learning and communicate with each student at his or her level. WE might not always like what the student writes, but at least they are finding their voices and as an instructor, I was helping them individually in a very different way than in the classroom.  At some point, though, institutions are going to have to realize that they need to acknowledge this effort monetarily otherwise the only courses online will be those that require almost no input from the instructors.  Then institutions can boast about cost saving, G-d forbid.

Who Am I Speaking With or To?

My very first experience with online learning was at least two decades ago.  It was before anyone had ever envisaged a world of online learning or online degrees or anything approaching either of those two. It was when all we had was text messages, in other words before Java scripting enabled real-time conversations through the Internet.  I was involved, at home, with United Synagogues of Conservative Judaism, and my involvement at the regional level had me very interested in Rabbinic studies. Those who know me well, know that at one I had thought about being a rabbi. When I received mail that advertised an online course in Talmud study I grabbed at the chance.  In those days, it required me to look at e-mail only.  Email responses and early web pages accessed through a tool like A O L Online or even before that, CompuServe, allowed me to see dialogue from other participants.  We would be given a challenge to read about a Talmudic decision and the text that was used to arrive at that decision and we could argue the case back and forth. It was a fascinating experience throughout and I enjoyed every minute of it. However, something very special was part of this process that I have seldom if ever seen again. Every one of us was required to post a digital picture if we could as part of our introductions to each other AND THEN, every time our posts appeared after that, our picture was there for others to use to put a face to a name.  It doesn't seem like a lot but if you put that idea together with all that we teach about the importance to the culture of the classroom of recognizing the individuality of our students and help them each to have a voice and presence in the classroom equally, it only makes sense to have the same goal online.  I have tried this fall, in my online teaching, to encourage students to post a pic with their ID in WhatsApp which we use to communicate and, even now, at the end of the semester, there are those who  have not complied.  I believe that posting pictures and including them each time we post online, regardless of the venue, above and beyond what Facebook does, is imperative going forward.  Just like we learn to recognize each other through our voices and our mannerisms, we relate to each other by how we see each other and our visual representations, whether virtual or real, are important. We need to have pictures everywhere when teaching and learning online.

Dispositions To Complete

Dispositions To Complete

The institution that I teach online courses for and have taught in face-to-face classrooms for almost a decade now has long had as part of its program the advocacy of dispositions as part of the recipe for student success upon graduation. Each semester, instructors for each course being taught are required to assess their students on a variety of dispositions or approaches to their program, to each other, to the faculty and so forth.  I was a prime mover for the efficacy of that system of appraisal / evaluation because it provided me with an opportunity to advocate certain behaviours and values to the students in the program. I could talk to them about the relationship between their hoped for future profession and their attitudes towards each other, class assignments, participation in the program, professional behaviours and so forth.  Every semester, I got the students to sign contracts agreeing to adhere to the professional standards and behaviours that were the outward manifestations of their inner dispositions.  I had to constantly help new faculty understand what the dispositions were all about and how to complete the forms and file them with our central office staff.  So, why am I commented on this now? I got an email with the dispositions spread sheet attached from the office with the request to complete the required document and return it at my earliest convenience. The trouble is though that I have a handful of students online and I have absolutely NO WAY of legitimately completing almost all of the fields.  What surprises me is that I would even be asked, as an adjunct teaching an online class, to complete the same set of dispositions as I would have received had I been in a classroom once a week seeing this students in front of me. It occurs to me  that, despite all the time that has passed since we first started to teach online courses, and that would be at least 15 years, if not more, so little has changed, so little has evolved, so much of what we do has not made the accommodation in the slightest bit for the major difference between face-to-face and virtual teaching.  How do we even begin to talk about education in the 21st century unless we start to talk about the very real differences in some ways between the two?

Millenials Online

Millenials Online

It began innocently enough.  I decided that I didn't enjoy being totally retired and out of the classroom completely but didn't want to do any teaching face-to-face as that pins me down too much.  I had begun my earliest experiences at the post secondary level teaching about online learning and so I thought I would be okay to end my career the way this part of it began. So I put my name into the pool and got asked if I would teach Educational Research and Statistics online. The subject material was not a favorite of mine but I am a quick study so I accepted and I was off to the races.  I noticed something wasn't quite right from the very beginning. I asked students to contact me using WhatsApp and send me text messages. I encouraged them to Skype or phone if they wanted.  I made myself available in every way possible using the technology. I believed that these students, born well after I first started to teach teachers on peer-to-peer networked desk tops, would have no trouble with the communications at all. It might have been a problem with the content but the mode of delivery I never thought would be a problem. However, it has turned out that it has been a challenge for almost all seven of them at one point or another. I don't think it is that they are not comfortable with technology. I think the problem for starters is that there are too many competing activities for them to devote to the course work to the best of their ability.  They are working either part or full time and not always in a classroom, although they all want to be teachers.  They all carry at least one part time job to pay for their earlier programs.  They all want to have their freedom from class and assume that whatever they have to do, it should not be so challenging that they cannot get it done on time or as expected. We are more than two thirds of the way through and there are four major assignments and I have one who has not finished anything at all, and only three who are now finished Assignment Three and ready to go on to Assignment Four.  I have told one already that I think  he has the making of a fine PhD dissertation in this graduate course and he has not once said thank you.  I have had to lead some of them around and almost point their noses in the right direction.  I have tried to help them get a vision of their course work but it just doesn't seem to be coming easily.  Is it me? I don't think so!  I think it is the nature of the student, used to being given everything and everything made easy and here, when they have to take up a challenge, they don't have the time or the willingness to make the effort.  This despite my encouragement to use Skype or WhatsApp or EMail or Text Messaging to contact me for help. I never would have expected students online to be so incapable of using the technology to accomplish their tasks.  How can we ever change this?