By Michael Morrone, J. D.
Senior Lecturer, Business Communication, Kelley School of Business
Faculty Fellow, UITS Communications Office

“I know.” A simple statement may have many possible meanings depending on tone of voice, gestures, posture, and timing of the statement. In the class room the best teachers consider their students’ non verbal communication a valuable resource. It helps them gauge student understanding of course material, meaning of comments and questions, and engagement. It helps them connect with students. Teaching online takes away all but a scintilla of this valuable resource. A resulting challenge means online courses need to prompt student interactions with faculty, other students, and course material to effectively promote real learning. To create these interactions, Assistant Professor of Tourism, Convention, and Event Management Amanda Cecil uses a full suite of Oncourse CL tools.

As faculty members adapt courses for online delivery, “virtual reality” becomes a concrete part of their everyday work. They create virtual learning spaces, online classrooms. They create meeting rooms or collaboration spaces with regional, national, or global reach. They trade electronic “papers,” “pictures,” or “videos” routinely. They take on virtual personalities. They spend real chunks of valuable time in digital, virtual worlds.

Faculty members have to plan an online course much as they would a course taught in a traditional classroom. But online instruction doesn’t give faculty the opportunity to adapt messages to students in real time. This creates a pressing need to foster interaction. Teachable moments must be carefully choreographed. Cecil found Oncourse CL provided an ideal environment for structuring her online course. She created modules in Oncourse CL to guide her students through the course. She composed the modules using the “create html page” tool which is found in Oncourse CL resources.

Though I am an Oncourse CL mentor, I had never noticed the “create html page” resource tool. This tool is powerful. You can create pages that are easily accessible through the web content tool. You can link pages to other resources or html resource pages. By embedding html page links in course sites and other html pages, you can create modules or etexts.

Cecil constructed an online course relying heavily on this tool, and she successfully injected the interactions that set the stage for learning. A quick look at one of Cecil’s modules for TCEM 471 International Meeting Planning, shown below, illustrates how to create interaction using online modules. Cecil used the web content tool to make the TCEM 471 Module index an option in the left margin of Oncourse CL.

All TCEM 471 modules are designed in the same format, so that students easily become accustomed to the course. Each module includes an overview, PowerPoint slides, a video lecture created with Adobe Presenter, required readings, activities, and assignments. Cecil embeds audio, video, games, case studies and external links to promote interactions with and interest in course materials. Students interact with each other using discussion forums, which are a graded part of the course. They interact with Cecil both in Oncourse CL progress checks, announcements, assignments, email and telephone.

Randy Newbrough, a Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) consultant who worked with Cecil, agrees that online delivery requires different strategies in organizing and formatting course materials. He says, “Developing courses for online delivery requires carefully chunking information and thinking through whether audio or visual or flash formats will best convey the information and create active engagement with other students, the instructor, and course materials.” He, along with Dr. Cecil, believes that Oncourse CL has the tools for creating and embedding strategically planned modules that best promote learning in the online classroom.

Tags: oncourse