Rose-Mary,
Online does tend to force you to do more reading, which is really a good thing!
Shelly Crider
Dianna,
Thank you for brining up the rewording issue. There are many times where we need to be more specific in an online course.
Shelly Crider
I disagree. I believe that it takes more time because you must make sure all information is readily accessible from the beginning for students. They will not be seeing you in person 1 to 3 times per week to ask questions, and you will not be seeing them at these times to give in-person updates.
In the traditional classroom, I usually develop a course week by week the first time I teach it. This works for an on-ground class but would be very confusing to online students who need to be able to see the entire course laid out at the beginning.
Erin,
Not only should the material be readily accessible....you have to double check your links to make sure they work all the time!
Shelly Crider
I think I have to disagree due first to, there is a good amount of explaining that can be done in a lecture that has to be spelled out concisely in an online platform Ie: explaining assignments, submission instructions, etc... Now on the other hand, if this is done once well and it never has to be done again and that saves time. All of the files you would like to use must be uploaded to be transferred to the online learning management software. Links have to resources must be uploaded and so on and so forth. I believe that it can take a large amount of time to develop a traditional course, now you also need to transfer all of this great content onto an online learning management platform. It just adds a step to your normal process, a big step and an important one.
I disagree due to the fact that quality online courses take much more time to develop. Creating discussion forums that are timely and relevant to the subject matter, making them interesting and giving them a real-world feeling takes much time to prepare. Moreover, the lectures have to be designed differently for online as opposed to a face-to-face lecture in order to cover the required topics in a shorter amount of time, and be able to handle questions from the students.
Online instruction itself takes much more time than a traditional classroom instruction due to the constant activity in the Discussion forums, grading papers as they are submitted, answering emails, etc. Anyone who thinks otherwise will not last long teaching in an online environment. Do others agree?
Dawn,
Creating timely and relevant subject matter is more interesting for the instructor as well!
Shelly Crider
I think a lot of times go into setting up both the online course and the traditional on campus course. However, the students might prefer some aspects of the online course vs the on campus course. With on campus ones, students can have the face time with the instructor; but with online course, students tend to look for the discussion board area to reach out to fellow students.
Ola,
Students can have time with the instructor through email, phone, or IM.
Shelly Crider
Agreed! I was more thinking in terms of students reaching out to each other as well in group projects; creating a sense of collaboration within online class.
I disagree. I'm currently getting my Grad. Certification in Instructional Design (focusing on elearning higher ed). If the course is designed well, such as incorporating multimedia into the modules, the development will likely take much longer and be much more expensive. According to Fenrich (2005), “the entire systematic design process can take you from 100 to 300 hours of development time to complete one student instructional hour.†(p. 56)
At the very least, if an online class is not designed well and fairly simplistic, it takes about as long (or maybe a bit longer) as on-ground class.
Fenrich, P. (2005). Creating instructional multimedia solutions: Practical guidelines for the real world. Santa Rosa: Informing Science Press.
Valerie,
Great post. When you complete your degree be sure to join in the Instructional Designers group on LinkedIn!
Shelly Crider
TOTALLY DISAGREE! If you are to create a truly interactive, multimedia, high quality course. Let me clarify -- an instructor could just direct students to different sites on the internet and post some documents, etc. making it quick and easy for the instructor, but dull and difficult to follow for the student. I have been a student in such an online course and did not enjoy it. BUT, if you use an ISD model and truly design and develop an eLearning course with this approach I believe it will take much more work! You must determine what you want the students to learn, what the best way to present information is, what the best way to foster learning that information in an online setting is, and how to evaluate the learning. So from my point of view, developing all of the materials for a traditional classroom setting is just the beginning, THEN you must put it into a multimedia format that makes sense, is easy to navigate, and incorporate the appropriate media to make the eLearning format as beneficial as possible!
Beverly,
Good point....This allows students to research and learn how to move around in the Internet. Just make sure you check your links often as links can be sold or break.
Shelly Crider
