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Session 2357

EVERYTHING YOUR MOTHER NEVER TOLD YOU ABOUT RUNNING AN ON-LINE COURSE-OR AT LEAST MOST OF IT1

Dennis E. Kroll, Ph.D.

Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering & Technology Bradley University Peoria, Illinois

Abstract - You have spent years learning to teach in a classroom. Feedback is usually quick and you can adjust as you go. Your students have spent years learning how to survive a classroom environment and, being engineering students, should be doing fairly well. Administrators have systems in place to cover all the emergencies anticipated given years of occurrences. None of this matters! In a fully asynchronous on-line course everything is different. This paper discusses successes and failures, solutions and problems for three courses being taught by the author.

Introduction

Much has been written and presented at various forums about how to develop a web-based course. However, little has been discussed about the details of the operation of the course as opposed to the actual educational content. This paper hopes to begin to fill that void. Web-based and web-assisted courses have been promulgated as the future of education. Web-assisted courses can be very beneficial. Keeping course documents on a web site makes access easier for all involved (except a few non-traditional students). Using e-mail and instant messages for homework submission and questions can avoid the "just missed you" problem. Yet, a web-assisted course still has face-to-face time and the option of remaining traditional for most or even all the work as the student chooses. Some students minimize face-to-face time and enjoy the additional freedom the web provides. Others seek security and reassurance by keeping close contact with the instructor and minimizing electronic communications.

Web-based courses have no face-to-face time unless both professor and student decide to use a chat mode in instant messenger with web cams. While there may be scheduled virtual classroom times, few, if any students are there. And while academics can procrastinate very well (especially with grant proposals), they learned these skills as students. There is no automatic pacing mechanism when a course is fully asynchronous. With distances between instructor, campus and student measured in multiple time-zones, seemingly merely distracting paperwork can become a

1 A preliminary version of this paper was presented as "Keeping Students In Line During an On-line Course" at the 2002 IL/IN Sectional Conference of ASEE.

Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education

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Kroll, D. (2003, June), Everything Your Mother Never Told You About Running An Online Paper presented at 2003 Annual Conference, Nashville, Tennessee. 10.18260/1-2--11755