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How the Online Classroom Changed the Way I Teach
Ximena Gallardo C. (English)
It was with understandable trepidation that I
took on online teaching when I moved, in 2003,
from a full-time job at a small teacher’s college
in West Virginia to part-time jobs to sustain me
while I finished my first book in New York City.
How could online instruction possibly compare
to the dynamic face-to-face communications
that I loved so? At the same time, I was tempted by the flexibility of online instruction, as it
fit perfectly with the routine of research writing (both could be done at home) while alleviating my necessary isolation by giving me a
chance to interact with people at least twice a
day, whether I left home or not.
After researching several online English programs, I accepted a job at the University of
Maryland University College (UMUC), one of
the first institutions to offer distance-learning
degrees to non-traditional students. At present, UMUC boasts “more than 500 courses and
80 undergraduate and graduate certificate and
degree programs completely online” with
“more than 87,000 online enrollments.” It is
also the major provider of higher education to
U.S. military overseas (“UMUC – Leader in
Higher Education for Adults”).
UMUC takes the quality of teaching quite
seriously. Before instructors are allowed in a
class, they have to take a five-week intensive
online training program about navigating and
using WebTycho, a learning platform custombuilt by the college to deliver its online courses (“About WebTycho: Introduction”). The
training includes extensive consideration and
modeling of best practices for designing and
teaching online courses. I was soon knee-deep
in discussions about the role of the online
instructor, myths of online teaching, building
online learning communities, and experimenting with different types of exercises for my composition class – experiencing all as a student in
an online class complete with assignments,
feedback, and assessment. I learned how “the
other side” of the online classroom worked
before I became the designer and facilitator of
my classroom.
Here are the bare basics of online courses:
learning is student-centered and self-paced,
with a strong emphasis on collaborative learning.1 That is, the instructor designs a virtual
space for meeting and learning, sets the pace
of the course, and serves as facilitator and moderator of online conferences and discussions
based on readings, online lectures, and personal experience. Time management and personal responsibility, then, are a must for any online
student. At the same time, since online learning is not restricted by space (students can work
from home, the office, a library, etc.) or restricted by time thanks to asynchronous communication (there is no set class time), students can
learn where and when it is most comfortable
and convenient for them.
Though I enjoyed online teaching, I longed
for the human interaction that had drawn me
into teaching in the first place and, as soon as
my book was done, I returned to the traditional classroom while still teaching online courses. I joined the adjunct faculty at LaGuardia
Community College in the Fall of 2004 full of
ideas on how to redesign my face-to-face classes based on my learning experiences as an
online teacher. As I shall explain below, three
related aspects of online classes – asynchronous
communication, multilayered digital text (or
hypertext), and the transparency of course
structure and apparatus (or its panoptical construction) troubled my assumptions about my
face-to-face instruction.
Asynchronous Communication:
“If you have a question or comment,
please post it as a response to this
exercise.”
Immediacy is universally regarded as the characteristic that makes face-to-face instruction
more desirable than distance education. At the
same time, the immediacy of the face-to-face
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classroom means that certain types of communication, sometimes the most important, get
delayed until “next class.” As Arthur W. Chickering and Stephen C. Ehrmann explain, asynchronous or time-delayed communications in
the face-to-face classroom most often occur
through homework and can be “a rather impoverished form of conversation, typically limited
to three conversational turns:
1. The instructor poses a question (a task).
2. The student responds (with homework).
3. The instructor responds some time later with
comments and a grade” (“Implementing the
Seven Principles: Technology as Lever”).
Face-to-face teachers often supplement this
classroom-oriented “conversation” by having
conferences during their office hours or through
peer group activities in or outside the classroom. However, since face-to-face classes are
constrained by time (1 or 2-hour periods a couple of times a week) and space (the actual classroom), the types of interaction remain limited.
Online instruction, on the other hand, offers
an array of spaces and opportunities for discussion, revision, feedback, and self-reflection. My
UMUC classes, for instance, have a general conference area for assignment discussions, a Q&A
conference called “Dr. X’s Office” for queries
and suggestions about the course, an area for
students to meet and greet each other informally, separate Study Group conferences complete
with real-time chat rooms, a collaborative document option and group e-mail, and a Workbook area for students to submit draft documents directly to me. If the nature of the communication is personal, we usually correspond
by e-mail. In every case, exchanges can occur
at any time or day of the week. Since I check
each class every morning and night except Saturdays, I am in frequent communication with
all my online students. In a sense, I am “there”
when they need me and not just during class
time or office hours.
The frequency and quality of the interactions with my online students made me realize
that “face time” with my face-to-face students
24 • In Transit
could use improvement. While I met my
LaGuardia students as a group twice weekly for
two hours and individually during office hours
and for a few minutes before or after class, I
interacted with my UMUC students either individually or collectively almost every day.
Hypertext: “Click on this link to take a
quick test on how to avoid plagiarism.”
As we can infer from the previous discussion,
99.9% of all communication in an online class
is written, an obvious benefit for a composition
class where one of the objectives is to practice
writing as often as possible. This practice can
also be a bonus for any class.2 Significantly, in
an online course the “text” that students “read”
is multifaceted, as it can include hyperlinks,
photos, sound files, streaming video, slide presentations, etc. And, as John Seely Brown
explains in “Growing Up Digital,” learning and
teaching others how to use digital text – or
hypertext – goes beyond mere “reading”:
The new literacy, beyond text and image,
is one of information navigation. The
real literacy of tomorrow entails the
ability to be your own personal reference
librarian – to know how to navigate
through confusing, complex information
spaces and feel comfortable doing so.
“Navigation” may well be the main form
of literacy for the 21st century.
Hypertext, then, allows for certain hands-on
activities that enhance the writing experience,
such as evaluating a range of online library databases and articles or browsing for images that
give a “face” to an issue. It is one thing for students to read about anorexia and another for
them to design a website with photos and narratives of actual anorexics.
At the same time, computer-mediated
communications are restricted because all
exchanges happen only in writing. Users
attempt to compensate for the lack of “feeling”
in their postings by using emoticons such as
smiley faces (☺), punctuation marks (chiefly
exclamation marks!!), or even by recording the
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occasional sound wave or video message. For
the online instructor, this restriction means that
all guidelines, instructions, and feedback must
be meticulously planned, carefully written, and
repeated often throughout the course. Take, for
example, a summary assignment instruction
for Louis Menand’s article, “The Downside of
the Upside of the Downside.” In a face-to-face
class, most of us would say something along
the lines of “Summarize Menand’s article in
250-words and hand it in by the end of class.”
The same assignment in my online class
requires a text such as this:
Exercise # 2:
Summarizing a Short Article
• Due: Sunday, Sept. 19 by midnight EST
• Read “Guidelines for Summarizing an
Article,” Spatt 43.
• Following Spatt’s advice on page 43, read
Louis Menand’s “The Downside of the
Upside of the Downside” in Spatt 63–64.
• Summarize Menand’s article in 250 words.
• Submit the summary as a Microsoft Word
document attachment under the Assignment Folder.
• If you have a question or comment about
the requirements for this exercise, please
post it <<here>> as a Response.
After a few months of having to explain myself
through “text” only, I revisited my assignments
for my face-to-face classes to test for clarity. I
saw a need to change my writing style radically. I began to streamline my paragraphs, divide
explanations into (numbered) steps, and
include relevant images or charts in my handouts. At present, I am experimenting with
including a written query for student feedback
at the end of a set of instructions. Most importantly, teaching with hypertext made me reexamine how well I was preparing my face-to-face
students to use, think, and write about the components of new media.
Course Transparency: “Hi, class. My
name’s Mark. I love writing. Oops, I
should not have said that. Professors
sometimes get suspicious of students
who enjoy writing.”
In this his first post to a WebTycho class, Mark
reveals, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, his awareness that I can “hear” what everyone “says” in
the online classroom, even if the statement is,
like his, posted in an area reserved for studentstudent interaction only. In fact, many scholars of the digital classroom now argue that the
transparency particular to the spaces created
by WebTycho or Blackboard can lead to containment, and in particular, to the restricting
of student analytical activity.3 I, on the other
hand, have come to regard the transparency of
online classrooms as a grand opportunity to
increase the quality of collaborative work.
One major argument against group-based
activities in the face-to-face classroom is the difficulty of assessing quantity and quality of student participation, even when specific parameters for evaluation have been established.
Indeed, it is physically impossible for a teacher
working with several groups simultaneously in
the face-to-face classroom to consistently supervise student exchanges. In contrast, the transparency of the online classroom makes promoting quality dialogue and evaluating student participation relatively trouble-free. Since textual
exchanges stay recorded, the instructor can easily follow the progression of students’ discussions, facilitate exchanges, and correct misconceptions or faulty information. Finally, a clear
rubric that establishes the parameters of what
constitutes a valid contribution formalizes evaluation.
Since transparency is a standard feature of
the online classroom, students take my “butting
in” their group discussions more in stride than
face-to-face students do. I always feel uncomfortable joining an animated group in the faceto-face classroom, because no matter how hard
I try, their conversation shifts from a more or
else equal exchange to one aimed at impressing me. In contrast, online students come to
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appreciate and even expect my input, and also
feel freer to ignore it. They become accustomed
to being listened to as well, and will often actively demand attention to their or their classmates’
ideas.
Watching my UMUC students collaborate
online reminded me of one of the mantras of
the online teaching community: “Students
remember only 10% of what they read or see,
but 80% of what they do and 90% of what they
teach others” (“Techniques for Designing and
Delivering an Online Course”).4 I also liked that
my online students could easily construct me
as one more “speaker” in the group, and I liked
Mark’s audacity – it seemed very much in line
with my efforts at decentering learning. I wanted my LaGuardia students to experience the
same involvement, detachment, and reassurance when collaborating in projects.
Thankfully, at LaGuardia my face-to-face
students and I had a readily available system to
create an involved, hands-on classroom community: I signed us up for a computer lab and
a Blackboard 6 (BB6) site.5
At its most basic, the BB6 classroom is an
excellent repository of copies for class documents such as the syllabus and schedule, lecture notes, assignment guidelines, and any other handouts given out during class, and its
“Announcements” section serves as a note
board to post assignment deadlines or schedule changes, and to identify any new documents or web links added to the classroom.
This aspect of Blackboard can be particularly
handy when students misplace their class documents (no more extra photocopying of lost
guidelines or syllabi!) or miss classes. Best of
all, posted materials are available to students
all semester and afterwards.
The real payoff of a Blackboard-supported
course, though, comes once students learn to
use the Group Discussion Boards. Online discussions enhance student interaction and
strengthen the learning community in a number of ways. For instance, students can continue discussions begun in the face-to-face class
and expand or revise their earlier observations
over days, weeks, and even months. Instead of
26 • In Transit
concentrated, defined class discussions that
inevitably revolve around the authority of the
teacher, the debate of issues can be a continuous activity that (unconsciously) obviates my
presence. Thus, students learn that student-student interaction can be as valuable as studentteacher interaction.
Online discussion also encourages the participation of students that may be intimidated
by the mostly oral quality of face-to-face discussions. In my experience, shy students and students for whom English is a second language
can profit enormously from being able to participate in class discussion without having to
perform under the pressure of immediacy, particularly when the assignment allows them
plenty of time to compose their contributions.
The teacher can ensure smooth discussions by
setting up some simple “netiquette” rules and
modeling courteous discussant behavior to
reinforce proper interaction.
Once students learn to upload documents,
we usually use the Discussion Boards and Chat
Room to collaborate on projects without having to meet face to face. This Spring, for
instance, I have transferred my peer critique
activities onto BB6: students post their rough
drafts to their Group Discussion Board from
any networked computer and critique their
group mates’ drafts exclusively online outside
of class. Later in the semester, the same groups
will meet online to collect and evaluate sources
for a diverse viewpoints paper, and then write
a recommendation on the best sources for the
class, which they will then post in the general
Discussion Board. Thus, the class engages in
quality collaborative work, and we have more
class time for in-depth discussions of readings
and for focused help with drafts.
In the end, I hope that, with the aid of BB6,
my LaGuardia students get a bit closer to experiencing Seely’s notion of learning as “discovery based,” where “learning becomes situated
in action; it becomes as much social as cognitive, it is concrete rather than abstract, and it
becomes intertwined with judgment and exploration.” And for that, I will have my online
teaching experiences to thank.
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Notes
1. For an overview of the particulars of online teaching and the challenges it posits for the traditional
teacher, see Lisa Kimball, “Managing Distance Learning: New Challenges for Faculty.” Group Jazz.
2000. 3 April 2005. <http://www.groupjazz.com/pdf/dist-fac.pdf>. Originally published in Reza Hazemi, Stephen Hailes and Steve Wilbur, eds., The Digital University: Building a Learning Community.
New York: Springer-Verlag, 1998.
2. See, for example, Anne Herrington, “Writing to Learn: Writing Across the Disciplines.” College English 43 (Apr. 1981): 379–87. Also, Charles Duke and Rebecca Sanchez, eds., Assessing Writing Across
the Curriculum. Durham: Carolina Academic P, 2001.
3. See, for example, the section entitled “Blackboard Meets the Panopticon” in Evan Davis and Sarah
Hardy, “Teaching Writing in the Space of Blackboard” Computers and Composition Online, Spring
2003. <http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/DavisHardy/>.
4. Both San Francisco State University Online and the University of Colorado at Denver Online cite
these numbers, but I have not been able to retrieve their original source, Real Education.
5. For a brief overview of Blackboard and its present uses throughout CUNY, see “Blackboard Gains
Acceptance as Teaching Tool,” CUNY Matters, Spring 2005: 14–15.
Works Cited
“About WebTycho: Introduction.” University of Maryland University College: WebTycho Help. 2005. 16
Feb. 2005 <http://tychousa4.umuc.edu/help.nsf/htmlmedia/about.html>.
Brown, John Seely. “Growing Up Digital: How the Web Changes Work, Education, and the Ways People
Learn.” University of Maryland University College CTLA 201-0309. December 2003. 22 Feb.
2005 <http://nighthawk.umuc.edu/CTLA201/0309/1214/class.nsf/Course+Content>. Originally
published in Change (March–April 2000): 10-20.
Chickering, Arthur W. and Stephen C. Ehrmann. “Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as
Lever.” AAHE Bulletin.com October 1996. 22 November 2004 <http://www.aahebulletin.com/public/archive/sevenprinciples>.
“Techniques for Designing and Delivering an Online Course.” Online@SFSU. 30 Feb. 2005
<http://online.sfsu.edu/faculty/techniques_designing.html>.
“UMUC – Leader in Higher Education for Adults.” University of Maryland University College: About Us.
2005. 16 Feb. 2005 <http://www.umuc.edu/gen/adulteducation.html>.
The Online Classroom • 27