Why Online?

Why online is a question that’s asked much less now, than it was two or five years ago. The short answer is, Our students want online courses. The longer answer is: space, students, taxes, freedom, flexibility, and our society’s continuing fascination with the (often) ease of communication that the internet offers.
Today for example, I communicated with someone in IL, MN, and CA, as well as several more-or-less snowbound friends in other parts of my own state. Students hunting for credits are not limited to their drive or walk time: the world is open to them. By offering a course online, the school is able to enroll students from across the world, and those students are able to complete their lessons in their own time frame: while some of us are working, sleeping,or having dinner, others of us are offering ideas to the class discussion boards; and we can reply to them once we’ve done up the dishes.
Online material means that no student ever again needs to worry about losing the syllabus: it’s right there, posted into its niche in the course. It also means that the school can free up a classroom for another group: we’re reducing the average classroom energy consumption. And it means that through a link to a movie clip, website, or other piece of information, the complete Internet can be made searched for enrichment material.

There are disadvantages to online courses, some people argue. We do not have that immediate community sense: we are not all in one room, catching the idea together, sharing a joke. The instructor cannot respond in real time to a question, unless that instructor happens to be online when the question is asked. And we lose the people-to-people focus.
Online courses mean that I need to write an explanation of what I would talk through in a face to face course. How much are students willing to read? How succinctly can I explain the points? How many examples should I use? Should I refer them to the text pages, or provide examples from classroom experience? I can’t gauge their understanding of the material by watching my students’ faces, and I can’t immediately offer another example if they look puzzled – at least not until we have video screens working on our computers – and then we’d need to make sure we had combed our hair before we sat down to work.

The proponents will say that while this may be true, we have greater resources, and – as I have experienced – students are likely to become as much or even more personally involved in online courses: they share anecdotes and experiences from their lives. They recount relevant material; they even share recipes they think we would enjoy.