Teaching: I'm more than six hours behind, not ahead!

My online class at VSU seems to be spinning along quite nicely--and it feels a little like they are doing it without me. I am so accustomed to spending time each day interacting with student postings within the discussion areas. This is especially true during the first six weeks of the course, when the large majority of instructional design and technology material is introduced through the textbook readings. Most of the students are new to instructional technology, and so the terminology, theories, and perspectives are new as well. I think of myself as a "Friendly Facilitator" during this class--one who designs activities and experiences which will guide the students to engage with this new material in meaningful ways.

So...am I facilitating as usual? I am reading postings, and answering direct questions from students posed through mail and the ITED 8100 Help Discussion Group. I am noting whether and which students have replied in proper format and on time, and giving reminders to those who may not be participating fully (an extremely very small number of instances this term so far). I am noticing and thanking students for their initiative in helping each other, either with course questions, or with problems in their own professional teaching practices. I am also publishing a weekly detailed posting called the "Friendly Facilitator" in which I comment on the general direction of the course, synthesize individual work into class summaries, and give advice on upcoming activities and workload. I did realize today that I "owed" the students a Module 4 Friendly Facilitator, and posted that one. It really should have come out toward the middle of last week.

I'll work on another Friendly Facilitator posting tonight or tomorrow, based on the work the students did last week in Module 5. I was trying to access and read the postings in that Module late this morning on the network in our apartment. While I am TOTALLY grateful that we have this Internet access at home, I have to admit that interaction with the many pop up windows and image loading within WebCT is a heavy load for this wireless connection. I've devised a workaround for the many times that I need to read a large number of student postings. I select all the postings, including my prompt, then use the "Create Printable View" feature to open all the postings in one file. I "print" the file to pdf and save it on my desktop. Then I'm able to read, take notes, and prepare my Friendly Facilitator remarks "offline", saving me frustration when I get knocked off the network. Funny...that's exactly the kind of workaround advice I give my students!!! Sometimes I think I've been spoiled by fast connections at home and school--this is a good lesson in empathy for some of my students who have to work on slower or variable connections.

So...am I facilitating as usual? Enough? Probably from the student point of view, yes. But, from my point of view, the competition for my attention here in Eger is quite intense. I'm meeting new people, getting settled in a new (fabulously old) office, trying to learn some Hungarian language, coping with a new climate (it's snowing!), and wonderfully spending time walking instead of in a car. I'm also trying to communicate with a lot of people, both in the US and here, through this blog.



This is the first blog I've really written, and it reminds me very much of the kind of time management challenge, and resulting addictive behavior, that has sometimes characterized my online teaching. So I think I am facilitating my ITED 8100 class almost as usual, with the blog siphoning off a bit of my time and discussion posting energy.

Another difference is that while I did meet in a synchronous face-to-face Wimba Live Classroom setting once with the students since I've been in Hungary, this doesn't seem to be practical on a regular basis due to the time differences. I plan to have the students use Live Classroom, for some activities and for presentation of a major group project called the Online Learning Activity. This is important because the whole program leads to their final research presentation to be conducted in a similar setting, a few semesters down the road.

There is one doctoral student in the course who is an IT Master's graduate and works as a Training Specialist for VSU. So he is amply prepared to act as my surrogate facilitator, and will guide the students to archive (record) their presentations so I can review and grade (when relevant) from the archived version of the work.

So, the students seem to be getting along fine without my "Mother Hen" impersonation. In a couple of weeks I will have a large number of very detailed papers to grade--I'm going to have to hide out for a few days and dedicate myself to my VSU teaching then. But until then, and after, I'm going to take this opportunity to do 'enough' to help my students learn, and to reflect on this experience. This reflection will have two benefits: 1) it will add to my weekly E-Teaching for E-Learning Seminar with colleagues here in Eger (upcoming blog posting outlining the first week), and 2) it will likely make me a better and more thoughtful online teacher and designer.

One thing online instructors are sometimes slapped in the face with is that they are not necessarily the 'center of the universe'--and that students can learn from well designed activities and assessments, and appropriate (not necessarily voluminous) feedback. They need me--just not all the time!