Student baseline understanding and their stressors and learning styles.
There are different styles of learning and teaching and you have to find your own as the instructor and help the student understand theirs to be success as an online student
Teaching online has its challenges. Understanding students' abilities and short-comings will assist in reaching those who are not well equipped for online learning. A teacher should have a broad set of skills as well as a clear plan to guide students to success.
When approaching an online classroom setting one must keep even more things in mind. From the time I set in the articulation meeting for a rising student, the Access team and I start to formulate his/her success we call it "beyond the IEP".Consideration has to ctart with the end in mind,a successful student within either envirnoment.
We need to consider our students' motivation. Is it intrinsic or extrinsic? Understanding their level of motivation will help us with knowing how to motivate them to do the work and help us understand why they don't want to do the work.
Make sure students are aware that an online class requires jusr as much time committment as a traditional class
It is important for students and instructor to complete a self-analysis to determine the success of being online. It is also important for students to realize that online can sometimes be more time consuming than a F2F course. Students should prepare to spend between 3 to 5 hours per week on class readings, discussions and assignments. The instructor should also monitor student motivation and to guide the student to success where possible.
I learned that it is important to assess your strengths and weaknesses as an online educator and to also help students assess their own strenths and areas of improvement for online learning. I hope to use a self assessment to gain this necessary information to help generate a plan for helping students.
Self-analysis for the student and the instructor concerning online teaching and learning is absolutely necessary because not everyone is going to be successful at it. Motivation is essential to online learning. It is mainly the students responsibility, the instructor needs to help with the motivation to keep the students engaged. Students and instructors need to have good time management skills or the workload will become overload.
I will need to have my students self assess their learning styles and provide some guidelines to help them with organizational skills as needed. Students with disabilities may require additional time, recordings of texts, or other accommodations in order to be successful in the online classroom.
In the Preparing Students to Become Good Online Learners course, module one, Online Persona, I learned the importance of having the instructor and students complete a self-analysis as related to technology and classroom skills to help everyone be honest about one’s strength and weakness of various areas. Also, that motivation plays a critical role in a student’s success in an online course. Time management is another critical area that must be addressed in order to be successful in an online course.
Make assignments due at the same time and the same day.
Have students self evaluate.
The learning disability is typically not as readily observable as a physical disability; therefore, there may be no obvious sign of the disability. The procedure must be implemented to ensure all students are accommodated and no student is faking the disability. It is essential that instructors understand the disability and provide appropriate accommodations.
Students in an online classroom will miss some of the advantages of a face-to-face environment. It is important for the instructor to facilitate communication among students without taking over group discussions.
I have never taught an online course and it has been a while since I took online classes. I had never considered that I should survey students about their readiness for online learning. I will implement that into my classes. I learned that feedback is a good motivator and that motivation is essential to be successful in the online learning environment. I also learned that teachers need to be even more conscientious about the needs of students with disabilities and discover ways to help them be successful.
Online instructors should be good at multitasking, organizing, and connumicating. Time management for the instructor and the student is a major factor in an online course success.
This may sound naive but I was amazed to read that 1 hour of online instruction could take as many of 10 on the instructors side. Likewise, students need to allocate more time to be successful online than I had anticipated. I assume those are expectations for adult or university students. I can easily see that much time on my part in building (let alone supporting) my courses. I can predict though that for my high school classes (9th grade), they could easily become overwhelmed and I will need to chunk for everyone as if they were one of our special populations (ELL, SPED, remedial).
Communication continues to be the driving force for successful online teaching/learning. Self-analysis is a constant for success.
I have learned that time management and motivation are needed on the learning end and should be recognized by the teacher.
A huge part of being an on-line instructor is support! Students may not know how to be the best on-line learners, and instructors can help students identify their strengths and weaknesses, and support them in knowing how to be successful.
There are factors that determine if students are a good fit for distance learning such as motivation, tech skills, time management and communication skills.
