Student Interest
I seem to see the potential of the on line courses more than the students do. They view the acts of completing the on-line portion as perfunctory rather than neccessary or beneficial. They value on ground training more. How does an instructor best frame the discussion to motivate students to "get in the on-line game?"
Shaunda ,
In my experience, I have found that if students see the point of what they're doing and are assigned a score/grade for their efforts, they will usually participate. Students often do not realize the instructional benefit of much of what they do - we design instruction for the benefit of the students, but the students often only think about how important is this? Why do I need to do this? What grade will I get? Eventually, as learning takes place, students begin to see the benefit.
Dr. Ruth Reynard
Shaunda,
I agree with you in that students do not see the importance of learning the on-line game. The problem is that we as instructors and teachers know that if they can learn this skill it will help them when they become employed. Many employers use on-line classes to train their employees. If you could tell of examples or have a person come into the classroom and tell the students that they were trained by their employer using on-line this may help. I use the example of my wife, an RN, who moved from one position in the hospital to another and 90% of her update training was on-line.
Using examples of how on-line is used to train employees may help you get your students to buy into "the on-line game".
Charles,
Very true...online delivery is common place now in so many organizations for training and ongoing development. Encouraging students to explore and use these tools helps prepare them for this reality. The more instructors can integrate the technology into existing courses to become hybrid or blended, the more students will benefit. This will mean that students do not have to be fully online students to achieve the benfit either.
Dr. Ruth Reynard
In one of the on-campus classes I teach I also found the students were less interested in getting onto the online version of the class to access even simple things like their grades or even do the quizzes. Surprising I thought they would be more into it coming from the technology age. I literally had to demonstrate the site's use and also how to send it to their regular email and not thier school email so they would look at the emails. Now I do this at the start of every class and walk them through the class site and the assignments.
Robert,
Very true - even tech-savvy students should have an orientation to both software functionality and outcomes/expectations. Also, many online quizzes and tools are not engaging for students even though they have easy accessibility etc - a test is still a test :)
Dr. Ruth Reynard
Even though I work in a hybrid environment, we changed our program to one in which students have to come to school the whole first week. This decreased the fall-out/fall-behind percentage and allowed the students to first interact with the online environment while help was available.
Rex,
Great idea - do you have stats on this? I would love to know about the percentage improvement and what you have the students do in the first week...
Dr. Ruth Reynard
Shaundra,
Being that I teach entirely online, this problem saddens me. What's more, I am saddened by the fact that I can relate in my own classrooms. They tend to view the "traditional assignments" (essays, quizzes, tests, etc) as useful, but not group projects and/ or discussions. Especially with discussions, no matter their interest or disinterest in the topic, what matters to them is "How much do I have to do?" and "Is this for a grade?" *sigh* Any advice?
