Friday, May 24, 2013

First Day Jitters

I should have written about my first-day jitters before I got through the first module of the online seminar I'm taking....but my worry about the "first day" got in the way of my blogging about the first day. The irony isn't lost on me.

The first day is past, but even a week later, I still feel the need to think about how it felt. I was nervous like a 9th grader before the first day of high school. What if I couldn't find my class? I worried about other things, too, but as the start date grew closer, that question was the pressing one. I suddenly understood the questions that my office has gotten from high school students taking an online dual enrollment course through our college. "When do we start? Where do we go to start? What do we do?" I knew the "door" was somewhere in my computer, and I did find it without much trouble after I read the syllabus. But I'm a person who's "done school" for almost for ever, and I can imagine that a high school or college student new to an online class wouldn't necessarily look to the syllabus for instructions about where to start.

The first-day email from my instructor helped to affirm that I was in the right place and started off on the right tasks. It makes me think about a chain of communications that might be helpful to online students. For starters: an initial email that confirms their registration and gives them a short list of three steps:

  1. Read the attached syllabus.
  2. Mark these important dates on their calendars.
  3. Buy these books or materials.
  4. Watch for another email on [date] explaining next steps. 
About a week before class starts, another email might be in order to direct students to the "doorway" for the class and tell them when and where to be there. A link to an introductory video of the instructor might also be nice at that point--I know that I appreciated that welcome from our instructor. 

A first-day email sent from the instructor (like the one I received) would be a great way to affirm that yes, "we" are moving ahead together today, and that the instructor will be there to answer questions and help us know we are headed in the right direction. My instructor gave prompt feedback on the first assignment. This was really important for assuring me that I was on the right track....and that we are working together as student and teacher, not as learner and computer. 



Saturday, May 18, 2013

Message in a Bottle....Why I'm Blogging

I'm doing one of the things that I love best: writing....and writing about learning / teaching. I'm also doing my homework: I started bloggin as one of the requirements for a 6-week online seminar I'm taking about teaching online and hybrid courses. I hope to keep the blog going beyond the seminar, but we'll see. In the meantime, I'll use this space to think aloud about the experiences of being a student and being a teacher in an online course....which is to say that I'm blogging about being a learner.

I've done this kind of reflection before, and I'm glad to have a nudge to do it again. A few years ago, I decided to journal for 5 minutes a day each time that I worked on an article that I was writing. I journaled straight through from the start through submitting the piece to an editor, and it was a telling snapshot of challenges and rollercoaster of emotions that a writer can face.

I kept the journal because....

  • I wanted my students to read it--to get a sense that the challenges they faced as teacher-writers weren't unique. I wanted them to understand that their questions were the questions of good writers--and that they had what it would take to get through the challenges of their own writing. 
  • I wanted to model some things for my students: to give them a window into how I thought about and dealt with those challenges, as well as to show them what I would be looking for in their own journals about writing. 
  • I wanted to write to my future self. When students in my class were stumped, or frustrated, or surprised, or elated, I wanted to be there with them and understand their experience....and how I might be most helpful to them.

My hope is that by sharing some of my thinking here about learning/teaching, I'll help other learners (whether students or teachers) who are interested in the same kinds of experiences and questions that I'm working through. In a way, this blog will be a message in a bottle....and I expect that when I'm teaching online / hybrid courses of my own--or helping other professors through the online teaching adventure--that I'll come back to find these notes to help me anticipate and understand what they may be thinking, doing, feeling, and wondering.