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I teach a face-to-face course that is more or less a part of a freshmen block.\u00a0 Traditional first-semester freshmen take my tech class, an introduction to education and a special education course.\u00a0 The instructors\u00a0for the three courses try to coordinate activities so that one course’s field experience doesn’t leave everyone else with an empty classroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last week most of the students were in the field.\u00a0 I have a few online activities in\u00a0the tech course\u00a0so I planned an online class for Thursday.\u00a0 Since my students were in the field during regular class hours, I had to have an asynchronous activity.\u00a0 Most of my students\u00a0had no high school experience in online courses, so this whole process is something new for them.<\/p>\n
I recorded (voice and screen recordings) some background material\u00a0using Elluminate and made it available to the students.\u00a0 I created a discussion board and asked that all communication about the activity take place in the discussion board.<\/p>\n
As is typical for this first online assignment, a few students can’t avoid\u00a0emailing me their questions.\u00a0 I kindly explain that other people will probably have the same questions and for that reason the questions should be asked in the discussion board.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The more difficult problem for the students is creating the proper context for the question.\u00a0 I see posts like:<\/p>\n
I keep getting an error.<\/p>\n
There is no sound.<\/p>\n
I can’t save the file.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
These “one liners” don’t give me a lot of information to work with.\u00a0 I don’t know if the question concerns the resource material or\u00a0the construction of the artifact.\u00a0 I have to add a followup question to the question (which I don’t like to do) just so I can have enough information to understand the context of the question.<\/p>\n
I have come with a three-step-bop for online course questions.<\/p>\n
1 – Tell me what you are doing.
\n2 – Tell me what you expected to happen.
\n3 – Tell me what you observed happening.<\/p>\nThose first two items are usually absent from the post, but are needed to give me enough information to understand what\u00a0is being\u00a0observed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I teach a face-to-face course that is more or less a part of a freshmen block.\u00a0 Traditional first-semester freshmen take my tech class, an introduction to education and a special education course.\u00a0 The instructors\u00a0for the three courses try to coordinate … Continue reading