Voki. Jing. Glogster. These are common buzzwords in the online instructor field. There are hundreds of interesting and unique applications that are being developed daily to enhance the online classroom. Online classrooms want students to be engaged and one way to do this is to enhance the course and make it more clickable – ultimately including more interactive aspects and less text.
Audio, video, and animation are all important aspects of the online classroom and more and more online classrooms are incorporating these elements in a variety of ways. The trick to integrating these elements into the classroom is making sure that their use is seamless. Students who try to click on video after video and experience pop-ups, sites that are blocked, etc. are quickly going to become frustrated and not view any of the resources that the instructor deemed as valuable.
As an instructor, utilizing these tools requires a great deal of time and effort. It’s also important to remember that curriculum changes can occur at any point, making the videos or animations one has designed for a course obsolete quite quickly. Before spending numerous hours utilizing these tools and developing these resources for students, it’s important to analyze the benefit the student will receive versus the time spent creating the resources – as well as if the learning and engagement will truly increase as well.
For most online instructors, we teach utilizing the same course shell numerous times. For me, that means that I have the opportunity to enhance the course and add to my personal resources each time I teach a course. Unfortunately, that also means that students who an enrolled the first time I teach a course will not have as many outside resources and engaging elements – but by the 10th time I teach a course, it will be quite engaging. The trick is finding a happy medium in utilizing the variety of tools and applications available while still utilizing time efficiently for both the instructor and the student. This can be quite tricky.
If an instructor is limited for time, I would definitely encourage them to spend more time interacting with students to establish personal relationships and to clarify course concepts in the discussion boards before spending additional time creating new elements to add to the course. Without the fundamentals of strong communication, frequent presence, and active discussion – the other elements will not bolster the course anyway.
It is also important for the instructor to limit the amount of time a student is required to be engaged within the course. Most course shells are already developed to have students spend the required number of hours in the classroom (sure, some students do not, but that is another issue…). When adding videos and other interactive links, it is important to keep the engagement short but packed with information and knowledge that will benefit students. For example, adding an hour long video probably isn’t the best move for most courses – adding a 5 minute video clip will most likely be viewed much more frequently and be comprehended.
Overall, it’s important to keep students actively engaged in the course, but not at the cost of other vital elements of the online classroom.
About the Author
Jamie Weitl is a WAHM teaching for several online universities and raising three precocious little ones. In her spare time she enjoys writing, baking, and running. For more info, see my Google Plus Profile.
