I am a relatively new online professor and have thought about this quite a bit as I have already seen some students excel overnight and it has raised my awareness to the topic. To mitigate this, I have started to incorporate questions from discussion forums as well as from proprietary course handouts.
Hi John, we are finding that learners can be very clever when they cheat. Some learners take a sentence or two from several learner's discussion compositions and create their own. Other learners are sharing their discussions from other sections or previous courses and some are selling them to papermills! We created a tool that matches discussion posts, so we have been able to catch many learners copying discussion posts. Tina
I actually don't have a huge turnout to my live chats because many students have ground classes on campus the same night. Therefore, I can't compare their comments/writing style in the chat to their comments/writing style from their assignments. I do have several students who email me, though, and even though email is written much more casually than a formal assignment, I still use it as my marker to check for correct grammar usage, spelling, proper set up, etc.
Natalie,
Is there a possibility of changing the date and/or time of your chats to eliminate the conflict with the ground campus schedule?
Dr. S. David Vaillancourt
Yes, I actually have a lot of flexibility to do this. I ask the students on day 1 if the schedule I set is conducive to their being able to attend, and based on their feedback, I do make some changes. I have spoken to my colleagues and attendance for the live chats, regardless of the class topic, is low all around.
Natalie,
I understand. Many instructors find attendance in the live chats to be relatively a relatively low percentage of the students enrolled in the class. Some data suggests it is because the students primary reason for taking online classes may be the asynchronous characteristic. Flexibility in scheduling and not having to meet at a particular time appeals to a great many of the online students. Many of us continue to seek ways to increase the chat attendance. Hang in there and let us know if you or your colleagues from across anything that is especially successful. Thank you for sharing.
Dr. S. David Vaillancourt
