Ten years ago, as a graduate student in curriculum and instructional technology, I never dreamed I’d be teaching more online courses than face-to-face (f2f) courses this spring semester 2005. In fact, my first experience as an online instructor was only last semester. As an instructional designer at a medical university for 6 years, I helped many instructors add an online component to their courses or develop an online course from a f2f course. I even taught a module or two in a couple of those courses; however, the fall semester of 2004 was my first solo flight. I can only describe the experience as finally being allowed to fly the plane after teaching instrumentation for 6 years!
As an adjunct instructor with a background in writing and teaching composition and a PhD in instructional technology, I took on an unusual mix of courses on my first flight. While teaching technical writing, business communications, and English composition f2f, I initiated my online career teaching another English composition course. A few weeks into the fall, I facilitated a Nova Southeastern University online graduate course, Applications of Distance Education Technology. These two classes were the North and South Poles of my online life, as most of the composition students were first-year community college students (two were dual-enrolled in high school and college), and the NSU distance education students were all in their dissertation stage.
What the two groups of students had in common were the number of adult students and WebCT. That’s it. The NSU graduate students were seasoned distance learners and, because they had started together in a cluster, they all knew each other and had bonded long before I flew into the scene. The college freshmen knew no one (except for the dualenrollees who attended the same high school); most had never taken an online course. On the other hand, most of the NSU students had worked in the field of instructional technology much longer than I. In those moments when I was flying blind, I remembered their vast experience and took comfort in the thought that most of my students could have taught the course themselves.
Now I truly knew the difference between a sage on the stage and a guide by the side. The course was handed to me neatly packaged with a syllabus, study guide, text, and video modules on CD-ROM. I scheduled and hosted the cluster chat sessions, administered and graded the exam over the materials, answered students’ questions, monitored and contributed to the discussion board, commented on their video storyboards and made suggestions, empathized with them as they tried on a tight schedule to tape, edit, and produce a 10-minute video on a significant application of distance education, and encouraged them when the technology failed. Many times I used my experiences teaching the English composition class online as case studies for discussion. They validated my thoughts and feelings about being an instructor in an online course, and I validated their insights into teaching and learning online. Just when I really thought some of the students needed me, the course was over; I reviewed their projects and awarded the final grade.
The online English composition class was a different story. Oh, I was still the guide on the side as much as I could be; however, students required a lot more direction. I encouraged group work via e-mail, chat, and phone, and I provided constant feedback to my students, who ranged in age from 17 to 55+, and in skills the gulf was just as wide. The class was intense and exhausting. Sometimes I’d open the discussion board to find 28 posts to read, the next day there were another 25 or more, and my email box was overflowing! Not only did I provide feedback, my students provided feedback to me and to fellow online students. We bonded early in the course. Their compositions made me laugh and cry and feel so proud as they revised and revised again to send me their best work. We discussed and wrote about important and current and classic issues that affect their lives. We posted them online to share with each other. We became a rhetorical community, and students learned to use rhetoric as they wrote to inform, to persuade, and to argue. Most of all, they challenged me to keep up with them. Their online portfolios told the story well; they were so proud of what they learned and what they accomplished, and how much they had grown as writers, as students, and as individuals. They loved me, and I loved them right back.
Then the semester ended: the airplane came to a sudden stop at the end of the runway. Day after day, I checked the NSU WebCT and the community college WebCT in hopes that someone might have added one last post. It was Christmas: snowflakes were falling, and I never felt so alone in my life!
On January 10, 2005, the intensity started all over again, this time with three online courses and only two f2f. I put up a new technical writing and business communications course on WebCT, revised my online English composition course, and started collecting bios, pictures, and Web pages of my new NSU cluster. I’m excited again! After all, I’m a seasoned pilot of online courses. I think I found my niche!
“The course was handed to me neatly packaged with a syllabus, study guide, text, and video modules on a CD-ROM.”
—Shirley Walrod
