All posts by Dee Schmidgall

Confessions of an Online Student: Voyeur or Classmate?

Until I had to withdraw due to family obligations, I recently spent four weeks as an online student in one of DePaul’s Cinema and Digital Media courses. While much of the experience was positive, I’m left with some negative impressions as well.

Readers of my earlier posts know that while I design multimedia for DePaul’s School for New Learning online program (SNL Online), I’m usually not enthusiastic about actually taking online courses myself. I normally like the experience of sitting in a physical classroom and interacting with my classmates. For this course, though, I felt that online would be perfect. It was a subject that didn’t lend itself to a lot of group interaction and discussion. There were clearly defined learning objectives supported by a comprehensive textbook, appropriate learning activities and assessments, and a proprietary LMS that would deliver recorded classroom sessions with video, audio, whiteboards and presentation screens that I could view at my convenience. I would read, watch, and produce. What could be easier?

Well, the online classroom experience was completely unsatisfying. I had anticipated being able to supplement the readings and clarify key concepts and directions by downloading and efficiently viewing the classroom presentations. I had, in fact, found this to be a useful perk when in the past I’d taken CDM courses on-ground, where I could note the time a key concept was discussed, then search for and review it later.

This time, however, with my only classroom contact being virtual and asynchronous, I found that I was by turns bored or frustrated. Removed from the distractions of a live classroom I was struck by how much of a three-hour class was filled up with empty space; the instructor shuffling papers or searching for files or waiting for something to load from the Web. Painful waits for students to respond to questions seemed to stretch into hours. And while there were certainly segments of the recording that were useful, there was no way of knowing where those might actually be without sitting through the entire session. It seemed to me that there was about a three-to-one ratio of dead air to useful information. This was not what I’d anticipated.

Oh, and did I mention the actual recording quality? As I peered through my two-inch video portal, I strained to see the instructor, hear what was being said, and make out what was being written on the whiteboard. Though each session could be displayed full screen and had zoom capabilities, the video was very low quality and heavily pixelated even at smaller display sizes. The whiteboard captured input intermittently. Adding to my frustration, the instructor would physically interact with projected data, pointing out and clarifying important equations and processes that the in-class students could follow, but weren’t captured clearly by the video or whiteboards. The online section of this course was an afterthought, it seemed. I felt more a voyeur than a participant.

That said, I’m planning to take the same course online next quarter. But I now know that the online component is really an afterthought, that I’m really on my own for learning the material from the textbook and exercises, and that I’m essentially taking a correspondence course. Because just putting a recording of a classroom session online does not make it an online course. And just watching one makes you more a voyeur than a classmate.

Building Social Media for Students: A Waste of Time?

Perhaps it’s the end-of-summer’s-approaching ennui or plain old cranky, middle-aged contrariness, but as I witness the barnstorming enthusiasm for Facebook-like social media on display at any given online-learning conference and contrast that with the drumbeat reports of Facebook’s declining popularity, I can’t help but think that some of us are living in a state of denial.

I think our intent is good. We want to serve our students, we want to make it easy for them to communicate, we want to create a socially cohesive learning environment, and we want to give them the tools they need to succeed. We think we know our students; we think we know what they want. So let’s build our own social sites!

I’m afraid it’s wasted effort for the most part. Here’s why.

First, we’re replicating existing services and efforts. My department has ruminated for months about a social site for our adult students. Well, surprise! Students who wanted a social space have already created their own Facebook group, demonstrating again the truism that individuals can and do move faster than committees. Will these students abandon the group they created for a university-branded one? I’m betting not.

Second, we’re too late to the game. Facebook is hemorrhaging members, as the cool kids move on.  Twitter is the heir apparent; fast, flexible, and mobile. It certainly has great potential; see James Moore’s excellent presentation at http://preview.tinyurl.com/mg74tv . And as mobile devices become more ubiquitous, you’ll see more and better apps like MobilEdu, created by Terribly Clever Design and recently acquired by—wait for it—Blackboard.

So what does Blackboard know that you and I should? When to recognize that the game has changed. Blackboard realized they couldn’t design a better mobility app than the whiz kids from Stanford and stopped wasting time trying to. They’re free of denial and playing to their strengths.

We should play to ours.

Working with Wikis

Wikis are a great tool for collaborative learning, but like any other tool, they need to be used properly. In my role as wiki administrator/Mister Fix-It at SNL Online, I’ve recently checked up on several course wikis that I’d initially created and turned over to faculty and was disappointed to see some that were underused and poorly structured. Here are a few tips to make your wiki (or, ahem, workspace as PB Works, née PB Wiki, now calls wikis) easier to use and a better learning environment for you and your students.

Have assignments that use the wiki. This would seem self-evident, but unless students have to go to the wiki to do course work that will be assessed, they won’t use it.

Make those assignments appropriate for a wiki.  A wiki is not a discussion board. A wiki is a great place to work collaboratively. It’s easy to work on a common document without having to exchange endless iterations of Word documents. It’s easy to post work and share it with others in a highly visual environment. You can post and share photos, audio, video, and a wide variety of multimedia widgets and Web tools–things that are clumsy or impossible to do in a discussion. You can set up private folders for each student, so he or she can post sensitive material like a personal journal that only you and the author can see. But if you want a space for students to discuss things, use the discussion feature in your learning management system.

Provide scaffolding for students. Give them low-stakes tasks to do at the start of the course, like creating a personal introduction page, adding a photo and text to it, and creating a link to it from the course-wiki home page. Again, it should be a required activity, not an optional exercise. Your students can then build on this experience.

Provide clear directions for students. Many adult students are intimidated by new technology, and a surprising number of younger students also struggle with unfamiliar applications. Both groups need to know exactly what you want from them and how to create it. At SNL Online we provide faculty and students with role-based wiki FAQs, print and interactive tutorials, and links to PB Works’ extensive library of video tutorials to help with the “how-to-do-it.”

Provide navigation. The wiki will be underused if it’s hard to use. You need some kind of navigation and site structure. It can be as simple as a list of links on the home page that direct to student pages; the important thing is to make sure that users can easily find what they need.

Provide a template or wiki structure. I’ve set up some wikis for faculty with the course foundation completed; students needed only to edit existing pages or add pages to an existing section or folder. Some of our faculty prefer to create this structure themselves. So far, both approaches have been more successful than leaving the design and creation of the wiki to chance.  

Monitor and maintain. Because any user with editing privileges can change any page you don’t lock down, things can (and usually do) frequently appear and disappear. To maintain a consistent, usable learning environment you’ll need to keep an eye on your wiki and make corrections, adjustments, and replacements. Every wiki I’m familiar with sends wiki administrators e-mail alerts when a page is edited; this makes it easy to keep up to date. You can usually set the frequency of these alerts or opt out of them altogether.

Keep ahead of your students. There’s certainly something to be said for you and your students learning as you go along, but with new technology, it’s far more preferable to be comfortable with it yourself before asking your students to use it. Familiarize yourself with the functions and features of your wiki, use all available resources to strengthen your own skill set, and you and your students will create a useful and rewarding collaborative-learning environment.

Twitter: I have a head cold and…

Twitter

I’m nursing a head cold and have a blog post due. Can I put something together in small tweets of 140 characters or less?

Wondering about the Web literacy of our online students. Some have to be told to scroll to see content "below the fold." Why is this?

Resisting the notion of designing for users who are Web illiterate. Does designing for the few diminish the learning experience for most?

DePaul IDD consultant Daniel Stanford has written about user tech illiteracy. I’m currently thinking he’s onto something we should consider.

I’m thinking that a basic competency in technology should be a prerequisite for students who wish to take courses online.

I’m thinking about the faculty who are similarly challenged by fundamental Web/tech literacy and teach online. Requirements for them?

Concluding that Twitter is good for musing and asking questions; maybe stimulate discussion about user-centered design & Web literacy?

OK, my Twittering ends above. While I still sense that Twittering is a largely narcissistic activity (as is, in my belief, much of social media), I am interested in its ease of use, immediacy, connectivity, and mobility. I’m also interested in how Twitter’s 140-character limit shapes writing and thought: it won’t let me ramble. In that spirit I’ll wrap up with this: I’m going to try using Twitter to document the user illiteracy I encounter day to day. If you’re interested too, follow me at http://twitter.com/dschmidgall.

Wikis, We’ve Got Wikis Part II

In my last post, I gave quick overviews of PBwiki, Zoho Wiki and Google Sites. This time we’ll look at three others: Wikispaces, Wikidot, and Wetpaint.

 

Wikispaces

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Things I like about Wikispaces:

  • WYSIWYG editor is a breeze; love the preview function.
  • Easy to add widgets.
  • Extensive default widget list with video, audio, calendar, spreadsheet, polls, RSS, chat and IM, slideshows, map, bookmark, and custom html plugins.
  • Easy to add a logo.
  • Easy to invite users with a personalized greeting.
  • Built-in user statistics, with an overview and breakouts by members and pages.               
  • Wikispaces badges, which let you easily place a graphic link to your wiki on any Web site. There’s a live-changes badge too.
  • Fairly logical information architecture; easy to find the settings you’re looking for.

What I don’t like:

  • Advertisements on right pane of page. You have to pay to get an ad-free version.
  • Free versions can’t be private; public wiki can be viewed and edited by anyone, protected can be viewed by anyone but edited only by invited users.
  • Private wikis start at $5 per month; custom-permissions functionality starts at $20 per month.
  • Limited, cheesy selection of free skins.
  • Logo size limited to 150 x 150 pixels.

I really want to like Wikispaces. I think the WYSIWYG editor, selection of widgets, and built-in analytics are great features. I don’t like the limits of the free versions; the permissions settings don’t give you enough control over users and access. Aesthetically, the free Wikispaces are a disappointment; if you prefer to have a customized, professional appearance you’ll probably want to go with a paid version to get more functionality. This isn’t a bad free wiki; but it’s not at the top of my list.

 

Wikidot

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Things I like about Wikidot:

  • Mathematic equations on the page—a great feature for educators.
  • Bibliography block and citations feature.
  • Custom code can be easily displayed on the page.
  • Free version has customizable permissions settings.
  • Forum and per-page discussion features.
  • WYSIWYG editor has a preview function.
  • Decent selection of free skins, fairly wide variety.
  • Customizable CSS.
  • Active support community, extensive catalog of wiki code snippets for page customization.
  • Google Analytics.

What I don’t like:

  • WYSIWYG editor is kind of kludgy, more an html editor than a Word-type WYSIWYG.
  • Not as intuitive as other wikis.
  • Plugins hard to find or nonexistent.
  • Have to customize CSS to include a logo.

Wikidot is not the most intuitive wiki to use, but its ability to display mathematic equations, programming code (javascript, html, etc) and academic-text formatting like bibliographic information and footnotes makes it a smart choice for educators. It’s a bit short on easy multimedia features (you won’t find a drop-down of easy-peasy plugins, for example), but with its ability to customize look, feel, and access it’s worth a look for tech-savvy users who aren’t easily discouraged or intimidated.

 

Wetpaint

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What I like about Wetpaint:

  • Easy, intuitive WYSIWYG editor.
  • Nice selection of multimedia widgets: video, messaging, maps, slideshows, video mail, etc.
  • Multimedia search and embedding is a breeze.
  • Add photo feature makes uploading images, searching Yahoo images, or adding a slideshow easy.
  • Customizable permissions setting.
  • Spellcheck!
  • Add An Edit note feature: leave a description of your edits and/or contribution. 
  • Discussion forum.
  • To-do feature.
  • Google Analytics or SiteMeter for site statistics.
  • Wetpaint Central, a resource-rich online help and support community.

What I don’t like about Wetpaint

  • Limited range of free skins.
  • Can’t customize page layout.
  • $10 – $15 monthly to get an ad-free wiki.
  • Feels a little impersonal.

It’s hard not to like Wetpaint. It’s intuitive, with lots of thoughtful features like spellcheck, discussions, and Google Analytics. And it can’t be beat for multimedia ease of use. For example, you can search for and embed a YouTube video directly from the Add YouTube Video dialog box. No need to leave the wiki, go to YouTube, find the video, copy the code, and then return to and embed the code in your wiki. My complaints are few: I’m not crazy about the aesthetics, and I think the ad-free price is a little steep. However, Wetpaint is extremely easy to use, it offers customizable permissions, and its rich multimedia feature set makes it a good bet if you plan to use lots of video or Web 2.0 apps.

Wikis, We’ve Got Wikis

Lately I’ve been building, administering, and supporting wikis for our faculty at DePaul’s School for New Learning. When I got the gig, SNL had already contracted with PBwiki, so my experience has been with that tool. Recently, though, I needed to research alternatives for our grad program. I’ll briefly share some of my thoughts on PBwiki and two other wiki tools; then in a future post, I’ll follow up with an overview of three others.

 

PBwiki

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Things I like about PBwiki

  • Easy to set up.
  • Clean, uncluttered interface.
  • Easy, intuitive WYSIWYG editor and an HTML editor.
  • Creating pages, links, and folders is a breeze.
  • Easy to add users.
  • Easy to set access permissions. Premium versions have page-level access functionality.
  • Easily customized with your logo and nine preset color schemes. Premium versions of PBwiki can choose a color scheme based on your logo colors, or you can specify a custom scheme.
  • Easy to add media with Plug-ins feature:
    • Productivity: calendars, planners, Google gadgets, address link (opens a Google map) spreadsheet, stock chart
    • PBwiki magic: equations, html, footnotes, recent changes and visitors, tables of contents, number of visitors
    • Chat room
    • Photos: Bubbleshare or Slide
    • Video: upload file or embed YouTube
  • Easy backup and retrieval of pages and files. Easy to revert to previous version of page.
  • Extensive library of academic templates.

What I don’t like:

  • Can’t add users by e-mail domain.
  • Can’t set notifications at page level.

Overall, I like PBwiki. It’s easy to use and administer and has an excellent and responsive support staff and an extensive library of how-to videos covering everything from basic editing to advanced features. It doesn’t allow adding users by e-mail domain, something to keep in mind if you want to easily make a wiki open to a large population of users but still keep it closed to the public at large. It also doesn’t allow JavaScript on wiki pages, which precludes using apps like JS-Kit’s ratings widget. But it’s a solid, versatile tool, and if you’re looking for a free, easy-to-use wiki with a good feature set, you should give PBwiki 2.0 a try.

 

Zoho Wiki

zohowiki.jpg

Things I like about Zoho Wiki:

  • Clean, intuitive interface.
  • Easy drag-and-drop side-panel customization.
  • Customize top panel with your logo and text, or fully customize in a WYSIWYG editor.
  • Three wiki editing choices, WYSIWYG Advanced, WYSIWYG Basic, and an HTML text editor.
  • Customize the advanced editor with the tools you want (or the tools you want your users to have).
  • Easily add subpages.
  • Sidebar navigation automatically populates links to new pages.
  • Can customize the CSS.
  • Easy to add users.
  • Flexible access/permissions settings.
  • Can grant permission by e-mail domains.
  • Control copying ability of wiki contents.

What I don’t like:

  • Limited color palette. Can’t customize unless you know CSS.
  • Subpages don’t show as links in the parent page automatically.
  • Difficult to embed media. Need to work in HTML to format correctly, because the editor doesn’t give visual indication of where the embedded media will appear. HTML embeds appear in front of drop-down actions menu, making editing or selecting functions an exercise in frustration.

My first impression of Zoho Wiki was positive; I liked the look and feel of the interface and the ease of customizing the layout. However, it’s a real pain to embed multimedia and there’s no gadget or widget library. I also hate that Zoho adds a one-pixel border around page elements that appears as you cursor over them; this is likely considered a feature by Zoho, but I find it a distraction. Overall, you get a good feature set for free, but the kludgy editor keeps me from recommending Zoho Wiki.

 

Google Sites

googlesites.jpg

What I like about Google Sites:

  • Free. Sign up with Google account.
  • Easy, intuitive interface.
  • WYSIWYG editor, HTML text editor, and preview function.
  • Twenty-three free skins (site themes).
  • Customize colors, fonts, logo, layout, layout element sizes. Great deal of customization possible; can customize the color scheme for a given theme.
  • Editor lets you specify one or two column layout.
  • Editor makes it easy to insert Google calendar, document, spreadsheet, Picasa slideshow, presentation, video from YouTube or Google Video, Google Gadgets, as well as basic html objects like tables and horizontal rules.
  • Easy to add attachments and post comments.
  • Easy to add users and set access.
  • Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools. Get user data and make your site more visible to Google and users and increase traffic.
  • Custom domain feature; for example, mywiki.depaul.edu rather than sites.google.com/site/mywiki.
  • Preview page as viewer option.

What I don’t like:

  • Cheesy free skins.
  • Limited selection of page templates.

It’s hard to find something not to like about Google Sites. I love the ease of use and broad functionality, its integration with other Google apps is a tremendous advantage over other wikis, and I love the ability to easily change the layout. I like that I can choose to have a border around the video player without writing code for it; it makes it easy for noncoders to maintain a consistent and defined visual space for their embedded videos.

I find the twenty-three site skins a bit cheesy, but that’s merely a matter of personal taste; you could play with the settings and certainly find something to your liking. Google Sites offers more options, more functionality, more administrative features, more data resources, and more ease of use than other free wiki tools, and I recommend checking them out.

 

That’s it for this post. In a future post I’ll share my thoughts about Wikispaces, Wikidot, and WetPaint.

How Broad Is DePaul’s Mission?

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
Luke 10:29 (NIV)

Recently I spent a week in small-town central Illinois, helping to support my mother and arrange her affairs after the accidental death of my stepfather, who raised Belgian draft horses that he sold to the Amish community. He, like most in the area, was a blue-collar man, working with his hands to create a life for himself and my mom in the challenging economic reality of the region to which they’d only recently relocated. Once, it was relatively simple for someone with a high school education to make a living in the factories and farms of downstate Illinois; those days have passed, their memory fading like the day’s last light over the prairie.

The cities of Decatur, Mattoon, and Charleston and the surrounding countryside are struggling to stay afloat economically, and it was impossible for me to shake the sense that rescue for them would be long in coming, if ever arriving at all. The industrial jobs that once supported the economy have been lost to globalization and outsourcing, large agribusiness corporations have swallowed up independent farms, setting prices and dictating what and how to plant and harvest, and the small businesses that supported and depended upon the larger economic engines have largely disappeared, leaving deserted storefronts and rundown homes behind. If the jobs that once supported the region are not coming back, what hope is there for the people that remain?

Education is the only hope. Only an educated people can grasp and make sense of the geopolitical and economic forces that have swept through their communities and mount informed responses to them. Only an educated populace will elect and hold accountable lawmakers that will act in the people’s best interest. Only an educated people will be able to effectively re-create their towns and develop strategies to attract and keep new industries and investment. Education alone may not be enough, but it’s the crucial foundation upon which any hopes for reinvention and revitalization are dependent.

And it will have to be online education. The need is so pervasive, the cost to travel to centers of higher education so prohibitive, and the resources so limited that classroom education cannot be the solution for adult students, who must balance dreams for a better life in the future with the pressing demands of the here and now. A single mother of three working long days for minimum wage doesn’t have the money or time to travel an hour each way to attend a night class. A farmer whose schedule is dictated by the whims of weather or interrupted by illness or injury of his livestock can’t be expected to show up every Wednesday night at six. Both, however, can learn online, asynchronously and at a distance. Up until now, I’ve been an advocate for online learning mostly on a theoretical basis; what I saw and heard downstate convinced me that what we do is essential and will only become more so as the economy worsens and global competition increases.

At the memorial service for my stepfather the pastor spoke about the nobility of hard, manual labor. I think there’s nobility too in empowering ourselves and others through education. At DePaul we talk a lot about using higher education to lift up the disadvantaged. I’ve usually thought of those unfortunates as residing in some shadowy elsewhere, but they’re all around us, sometimes just outside the reach of our vision.

But we can expand our horizons online. Online in distant, isolated, small towns and farms students log in and become our close neighbors and broaden our university’s reach and mission. While questions of how to attract and bring more of them into our community of learners and how to make our education affordable to them must be answered, my experiences of the past week have convinced me that our mission can and should embrace and uplift an ever more diverse group over an ever widening region. Just over the horizon the light has faded for many small Midwestern towns and cities, filled with people for whom online learning could bring a new dawn. It’s imperative that we work to bring about that brighter day.

How much is that Ph.D. in the window? The commodification of higher education.

Last week my wife and I had dinner with an old friend who’d come in from out of town for a rare visit. She’s a remarkable woman, with a long stint in broadcasting followed by the acquisition of an advanced degree at UC Berkeley, which led to her current vocation as hospice chaplain in a major west coast city. Warm, intelligent, inquisitive and urbane; she surprised me with her announcement that she was about to start her doctoral studies. Online. And not at a school I would’ve guessed.

Because she’s such a hands-on kind of person her decision to study online seemed unusual to me, but I was really interested why she didn’t choose to pursue her studies at one of the universities in her area. Surely they offered online courses. Why this school, with so many prestigious alternatives?

Ph.D. = Driver’s License?

She allowed that she knew the degree wouldn’t be held in the same regard as one from the brick and mortars in her region, but that cost and flexibility had been deciding factors. Further, she assured me, the Ph.D. she would earn would be sufficient for attaining the job she wanted. It was, she concluded, the same as a driver’s license. It didn’t matter where you studied for it as long as you got one.

Give them what they want

I’m fascinated by this commodification of higher education and its acceptance. At both the recent Sloan-C symposium in Carefree, Arizona and an enrollment management workshop a couple of weeks ago I heard a lot of discussion about how traditional student populations are declining, how the survival of educational institutions is dependent upon attracting and retaining non-traditional (usually adult) students, and how both Millennial and adult students demand educational opportunities and experiences that are decidedly consumer-based and market driven. Give them what they want or watch your college wither and die, keynote speakers declared.

It’s rough out there

I understand the pressures that inform a prospective student’s decisions on what, how and where to study: I’d love to be studying theology or literature for personal and spiritual growth, but I invest my school’s tuition waiver benefits in professional development courses. And I understand the need for institutions to adapt strategically. It’s rough out there in consumer society.

My friend’s decision was pragmatic; she’d pursued her ideals as a younger undergraduate and graduate student and was now positioning herself in a competitive marketplace. Higher education must also adapt and make practical, unsentimental strategic decisions to survive and prosper. I do not pretend to have any answers to how we do that without abusing our principles. But I like to think we stand for something greater than market share. That we take a position rather than seek one. And that we’re more than mere commodities.

Listening to the User

I’ve been thinking a lot about usability these days. It’s not like I never considered the user; we document and provide print and video tutorials for a host of processes and procedures here at DePaul. But I recently had a long discussion with an instructor who took me to task for assuming that students would know how to play a file in iTunes U. He didn’t know to locate and click the play icon, or to double-click the file. He was frustrated and questioned the logic of having to explain to his students the process to access a video tutorial meant to explain yet another process. My impulse was to dismiss him as a clueless Luddite, but thankfully I heard him out.

This morning I was copied on an email from an irate student who couldn’t get her course-required third-party web app to install or work properly. It didn’t occur or matter to her that DePaul didn’t design or administer the application. Since the app was a required part of her course, for her it is DePaul, and her experience struggling with the software colors her perception of her course, her instructor, and the school.

What these two incidents have in common of course is usability, or lack thereof. Both illustrate that seemingly easy tasks are often anything but easy for many users, and that these struggles have a negative impact on user satisfaction and the perceived value of a tool, course, or institution. Why do we make these usability errors?

If I’m honest with myself, I have to admit that at least regarding computer literacy I assume others know what I know simply because I know it. That it’s obvious to double-click a file to open it, or execute it, or get it to reveal its function in some way. I assume others recognize that icons exist in an application to indicate functionality or some other important attribute that the user needs to know. I assume others know to check system requirements before downloading software, or at least know what system they use. After all, I argue, it’s 2008! These things are conventions, for crying out loud! And who doesn’t know how to install an application? Do we have to explain everything?

Well, no. But we do need to explain a lot more than we might think, and we need to make things a lot more obvious. How can we do that? We might start by incorporating some quick and easy usability testing before we roll out that nifty new Web 2.0 app or learning tool in our courses. Steve Krug suggests in Don’t Make Me Think that a morning testing session with a handful of users, followed by an afternoon debriefing, is an inexpensive and effective way to find out at the beginning of a project if you’re on the right track.

What happens too often is that decisions about tools and media are made in the optimistic afterglow of a distance education conference or by instructional designers like me reacting to industry hype or instructor pressures, and then passed down as blessings from the heights of Mt. Pedagogy. Then we are surprised and irritated when users reject our offerings for being too hard to use or protest our suggestions (diplomatically worded of course) that the problem is their own technological incompetence.

Don’t get me wrong. I still believe in rich media, in interactive tools and all sorts of whiz-bang features for online courses. I’m not advocating a return to the bad old days of scrolling through endless expanses of text. But I do think it’s time to work more closely with our users, to ask them what their needs are and how we might meet those, rather than deciding for them a priori and dictating what the solutions are going to be.

See Me, Feel Me. Why Am I Stuck On-Ground?

I have a confession to make. I design multimedia for online courses. I extol the virtues of online learning to anyone who’ll listen. Yet I’m taking a course on-ground. And next quarter, when given the choice between the on-ground and online sections of a programming course, I’ll lean towards the on-ground.

Why? That’s certainly a question I’ve been asking myself. My stock answer is that I’m not disciplined enough for an online course. My wife’s amused by this rationale; she often tells me I’m the most disciplined person she knows. She has a point. I was raised by Scotch-Irish and German Protestant farmers and railroad men whose idea of taking it easy was waiting until after church to chop weeds. So discipline shouldn’t be a problem for me when taking an online course. What gives?

When I take a course on-ground, I know that I’m committed to be in that classroom 3 hours every week. I’ll show up because I know my absence will be noted. I’ll show up because I don’t want to miss any information. And this is important: I’ll show up for the experience of being in a classroom, of being a student among students. I like to see and be seen. Rational or not, it makes me feel like I’m a student.

That last reason is the most telling. Because other than this intangible, what exactly does a classroom have going for it? My current course is taught after work in an airless, overcrowded, and overheated classroom, in which a great number of my fellows are tuned out and concentrating on their Facebook pages or texting one another. I’m exhausted by the workday and hardly at my sharpest. My instructor is overextended and often underprepared and is further handicapped by balky classroom equipment, improper software, and the flagging energy level that frequents evening classes. While there certainly is useful information exchanged in our class, the real learning comes from the readings and exercises, activities that I complete because I want to learn and because I want to avoid the social embarrassment that could result from showing up at the next class unprepared.

So why not take the course online? Why not spare myself the frustration, fatigue, and inconvenience of the on-ground experience? It’s commonly argued that a well-designed online course provides similar or superior opportunities for the exchange of ideas, for meaningful exercises, for peer and instructor feedback, and even for social connections. And there’s the ability to time shift, to log in and participate during the week at times that work for me instead of the demands of the university schedule. The only thing really absent is face time, the presence of others and myself in a physical space. The feel of a classroom.

I don’t really have an answer. But I’m concerned that if it’s this difficult for me to make the switch from on-ground to online when there are so many compelling reasons to do so, then we must be missing untold numbers of potential online learners. And that leaves us with a challenge. We can design a course to create and deliver a viable learning environment. Can we make it feel like someplace students want to be?