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.