Who can be an online student? Sunday, September 29, 2013 Can any student be an online learner? If you ask any instructor of an online course this question, the answer will undoubtedly be, “No”. It is no mystery that there are struggles with online students. I hear these all the time from one-on-one encounters with other instructors as well as in any meeting every attended. The current thought is that there should be a mandatory training for a student to complete prior to enrolling in any online (or even hybrid) course. The other side to this coin, is that many believe (with good reason in my opinion) that instructors should also be required to complete a mandatory training prior to teaching any online or hybrid course. I agree with both of the previous statements, but will only address the student side today. While so many agree with having a mandatory student training, I believe that this may be a few years out for our institution. Teaching my first online course back in 2008, I learned a lot from just one semester. There were a number of non-passing grades in that first semester, but I was convinced that some of these had to be due to technology issues (where a student did not have or understand how to manipulate the technology necessary). After thinking about this, I began doing what I call a “Multi-Part Assignment” for all of my online students. This is an introductory assignment that students MUST complete in order to remain in this course. The design of this for my course ensures that students are able to manipulate / access all technology pieces that will be required to succeed in THIS course. This is not a one-size-fits-all situation, it is designed just for my courses. If I will require that students post and comment on the discussion board, they must do this during the Multi-Part assignment as well. If I will require that students save a file in Rich Text Format, this will be necessary also. If I require that students view my lecture videos, they have to be able to access the Welcome video which is in the same format as all lecture videos. This continues on for every piece a student may encounter in my course during the semester. I do not assign any points to this assignment, rather they have to complete it to remain in my course. While I still will receive some emails that first week (“I hit the back arrow and now I can’t go back into the quiz”), these emails don’t continue throughout the semester. Rather, students get the opportunity to make the mistakes on this initial assignment that isn’t worth any points and therefore learn from their mistakes before they begin with the content of the class. I ensure that students complete this by password protecting the first “content” assignments. They obtain the password when they complete (successfully) the final piece of this multi-part assignment. I have embedded the password into the feedback of the final quiz (which just includes questions about the syllabus and set up of our course). This means that students must answer the questions correctly, and be able to view their feedback in order to continue. This assignment has helped me out drastically. Like I mentioned before, it allows me to deal with the “technology” emails at the beginning of the semester, rather than during the entire term. In addition, it helps students feel confident in continuing with this course knowing that they can do / access everything they will need to be successful. Furthermore, it has helped with those later emails we all receive that look like, “I didn’t realize that this assignment was due yesterday…..” I am able to access their Multi-Part assignment to show them that they did know because they were able to answer questions about due dates from the syllabus that very first week. My point is this: While it may be a long wait before we see a mandatory training for all online students, we can devise our own orientations that are specific to our courses. I would still like to see a required orientation, but in the meantime, I have a set up that allows me to implement this for students in my online courses. 9x9x25 Challenge
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