Not simply a matter of putting the syllabus online

I think I taught my first online class about nine years ago. My wife beat me to online teaching by three years, I think. And, she taught calculus, which meant spending hours composing the equations using MS-Word's equation editor. Oh those godawful days with modem connections and slow computers!

Even that many years ago, we clearly understood that online teaching was not simply providing the syllabus and notes online, and then everything being on "autopilot." The reality was quite the contrary and we spent a great deal of time interacting with students and evaluating their work. It took a while for learning management systems to rise up to that reality (I personally don't care for those systems.) The CEO of Blackboard, Michael L. Chasen, says:

When the industry started, it was about how to put a course online. Now it's about how to put the whole educational process online. It's about teaching and learning that take place in the classroom environment as well as outside — people putting their communities online, people putting their student services online. That's just a different problem than people were trying to address back when we started the company in 1997.

Which then opens up immense possibilities for something like Second Life--to become an online learning environment. No wonder then that my wife is exicted about a NSF-funded grant at their college that will underwrite developing and offering courses in Second Life!

Gas prices and online classes

If the stereotype is that most college faculty are left-leaning and environmentalists, then does it mean that online teaching and learning will be a huge environmental asset to a university? The ultimate "green" college is an online college?

Students, particularly at state universities like ours, are not from affluent families to begin with. So, with gas prices high, and with commitments like taking care of kids, online education might appeal to them quite a bit, right? Well, that is what we found out when gas prices went up sharply. The following is an excerpt from a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education a couple of months ago:

Many institutions say that their online summer enrollments have jumped significantly compared with last summer's and that fuel prices are a key factor in the increase.
The Tennessee Board of Regents, for instance, reports that summer enrollment in online courses is up 29 percent over last year. At Brevard Community College, in Cocoa, Fla., summer enrollment in online courses is up nearly 25 percent. Harrisburg Area Community College, in Pennsylvania, saw its summer online enrollment rise about 15 percent. And at Northampton, in Bethlehem, Pa., online enrollment is up 18 percent.
New Formats Ahead
"All across the country, community colleges and universities are getting requests for
online programs specifically with students mentioning the price of gas," says Ray Schroeder, director of the office of technology-enhanced learning at the University of Illinois at Springfield.
Some experts say that the rising interest in online programs could lead more colleges to expand their offerings, or experiment with "blended" courses that mix in-person and online meetings.

Online courses and intellectual property

Almost two years ago (November 11, 2006), I emailed the president of the faculty union in response to a call to boycott expanding online classes. I have no idea whether the administration and the union have figured out anything more on this. Here is most of that email:

... regarding online classes and intellectual property issues, I would argue that course materials belong in the intellectual commons, and not behind walls that prevent access.

Over the past few years, I have been impressed with two important approaches in particular:
1. The idea of "Creative Commons" that Lawrence Lessig champions.
2. MIT's venture into "opencourseware".

I am not sure if it was Lessig who started Creative Commons, but it was from one of his talks a few years ago that I became aware of it. (More info at http://creativecommons.org/)
This approach appeals to me because I think the more we make ideas available for everybody, the more humans progress. I don't think that all our progress has come out of material incentives alone, which is what complex intellectual property rights
regimens attempt to do.

A similar, and in fact related, venture is MIT's OpenCourseWare. (More info at http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html)
When it was launched I remember thinking, hey, this is why the Web is fantastic: we can easily makes things available for free and easy access to people wherever they might be. This is all the more the case when it comes to distributing knowledge to people in resource-constrained countries, which are quite a few in this world.

MIT's approach has catalyzed the development of the "Opencourseware Consortium". (More info at http://www.ocwconsortium.org/) It has now become a world-wide effort to pool together the academic knowledge.

Even at a personal level, most of the stuff I do I post them online. (For that matter, even my work reports are online: http://www.wou.edu/~khes/personal/workreports.htm)
I maintain webpages for the courses I teach and none is password protected. If anybody finds it worthwhile to use it, why not? Every once in a while I get an email from some faculty member somewhere in the world who wants to use some PowerPoint file. Of course, I reply that they can use it. For my classes too I scan for insights from other faculty. Many days in the summer I spend re-educating myself about the courses I am scheduled to teach by simply browsing through the syllabi
on the Web.

... I also hope that the union would urge the OUS campuses to join the OpenCourseware Consortium, if a campus is already not a member.

Did online trigger higher enrolment?

When we offer this class in the "real world", an enrolment of 20 to 25 is typical.
I won't be surprised if we have done a swap of sorts--a few students who might have taken this class may have very well opted out because it was online.
However, those who opted out because of the different modality had a whole bunch of alternatives in the real world. Those students who were searching for online options, however, would not have had that luxury.
So, if we are looking strictly at enrolment in this class alone, we are even. However, institution-wide, I would guess that the online class helped out quite a few.

In terms of filling up fast .... I think that this class did reach 20 quite early. I capped it at 25 only because the online mode is pretty much a writing-intensive environment, and 25 is the WI cap.

BTW, I am experimenting with video clips this term. With the horrible mic and webcam at home, I have already done two video clips that I shared with the class. I route them through YouTube--this way I don't have to worry about how to stream the video.
The second video was a near-disaster because only when I was viewing the video did I realize that the audio is ultra soft. I couldn't be bothered with a "take 2" :-)
I am planning to get a better mic this weekend. I attempted to play a music CD in the background, and that program froze--I think things are getting complicated for my three-plus year old university laptop. Would be neat if they replaced it with a newer one .... oh well.

Online classes: who takes them, and why?

I conducted an online survey, of students in my GEOG 413 class, which is completely online this fall term.
I kept it very simple, because I did not want to bore the students. At the same time, I wanted to get some key information, so that I can correspondingly massage my course structure. The summary of that survey follows.

Note:
I had embedded into the class homepage a survey that was actually through polldaddy.com, where I developed the survey questions.

What I find interesting:
A majority of the students have never had me as an instructor. So, it is not any “familiarity” that drew them to this class.
For ten out of the 25, this is the first online class ever.
Only 13 out of the 25 are confident that they would have taken this class, even if it were not online.

Summary of responses:
What is your current standing?
Sophomore: 1
Junior: 10
Senior: 9
Senior-plus/Grad: 5

Have you taken any introductory geography class?
None 0
One 8
Two 5
All three 3
Yes, at another college 9

Did you take the introductory geography class with Sriram?
Yes 7
No 18

Did you take any upper division courses with Sriram?
GEOG 410: 2
GEOG 418: 1

Have you taken online classes before?
No 10
Yes, only one 1
Yes, two 5
Yes, more than two 9

Would you have taken this course if it were not online?
Yes 13
No way 3
Maybe 9