Many UT System students are interested in taking online courses, and our campuses are doing their best to meet that interest. My own campus, the University of Texas at El Paso, has a rich history of affording students the flexibility of online courses, and a current and exciting project involves identifying an ideal mix of on-ground, hybrid, and online courses that students participate in throughout their academic experience at UTEP.
However, placing online courses on the schedule does not ensure that students will be successful in them. While students certainly need to self-regulate and adapt to a flexible format and a different learning experience, it is equally—if not more important—for faculty to invest significant time and thought into developing an online class that engages students and promotes their learning. This post includes a few thoughts about how faculty can best do so.
Many of our campuses require that faculty members participate in some form of a training program prior to teaching online classes. More than a hoop to jump through, these are valuable learning opportunities where instructors can learn about more than just teaching online. These classes are often online themselves, providing faculty with the same flexibility their students seek, and cover a wide range of topics including course mapping, student engagement, multimedia development, and how to ensure a course is ADA compliant and respects copyright policies. Faculty who participate in these how-to-teach-online courses often discover that their face-to-face teaching improves as a result of rethinking their teaching styles.
Similarly, when faculty have the opportunity to work with an instructional designer, they should jump at the chance to do so. While faculty are certainly experts in their discipline, they are likely to not be experts in developing an engaging online class. Instructional designers help faculty make sure that course objectives are aligned with the activities students are asked to complete and that those are aligned with assessments of their learning. Instructional designers also help us make full use of the features provided in the learning management system…and let us know when we are at risk of overwhelming students with too many of them.
One of the foremost concerns both faculty and students have prior to teaching an online class is the fear that they will feel disconnected from the class community. The fact of the matter is that this feeling is entirely warranted when a faculty member does not keep student engagement in mind. One of the worst class experiences, for everyone, is when a faculty member develops a good class but then only checks in once a week, or even less. That’s when we hear students say: It doesn’t seem like the instructor cared about my learning…or worse, is there even an instructor in this class?
And, finally, just as we do with a face-to-face class, faculty should make sure the student is at the center of every decision made when developing the class and teaching it. Just as we walk into a classroom and greet our students before starting the work for the day, we should also greet the students regularly in an online class. Simple tools such as announcements that pop up when students open their class go a long way toward helping them feel invited, in the know, and wanting to learn more.
Dr. Beth Brunk-Chavez is a member and current President of the UT System Academy of Distinguished Teachers. She is Dean of Extended University, which oversees UT El Paso's Public and Professional Programs, the Military Student Success Center, and UTEP Connect. She teaches courses on Writing Program Administration as well as Rhetoric and Technology, and her research interests include writing with technology, teaching with technology, writing program administration, and working with second language writers.
