KISSIMMEE 2008-LESSONS LEARNED

JAMES ETIM
Posted September 23, 2008

I attended The Teaching Professor Conference held on May 16-18 In Kissimmee, Florida. There were very many interesting sessions which I attended, including “Building Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Communities: Methods of Engagement, Assessment and Reward “ and “To See the World in a Grain of Sand: An Approach to Educating our Students and Ourselves about Globalism and Diversity”. These presentations were lively, informative and engaging. However, the most interesting to me was the three person presentation by Dr. Ngoc-Bich Tran, Dr. James Baker and Patricia Petty titled “How to Succeed in FIrst-Time Online Teaching: Top Ten Tips”. In the past, I have done web-assisted instruction using Taskstream. However, given that I am trying to develop an online course, I was open to absorbing the information offered by individuals who had moved from being novices a year or so earlier to be very adept in providing workable online courses for their students. Below, I present some of the things I took away from their presentation.
They began with the ten tips which are-
· Be open minded and enthusiastic when committing to teach an online course
· Be organized by planning and developing the course early
· Motivate your students
· Use available online resources
· Provide enhancement materials
· Provide clear and consistent instructions and feedback
· Keep open lines of communication
· Be patient and considerate of students
· Offer student support
· Enjoy it
In looking closer at these ten tips, bullets 2, 4, 7 are very useful as I begin thinking about my online course. Bullet 2 says- “ Be organized by planning and developing the course early”. This simply means that the course to be taught should be planned and developed at least one semester before it is taught, that the structure of each learning unit of the course must be designed and followed consistently and that students should be presented a calendar to follow as soon as the course begins. In terms of Bullet 4 that states that developers should use available resources online, this is a good advice since it will be easier to hyperlink or refer students to those online resources. The burden of copying materials, scanning them and or seeking copyright permission will also be lessened with this approach. Finally bullet 7 involves the following- set online hours, answer e-mails within 24 hours and be tone friendly in your e-mails since these are public documents. These are useful as I begin thinking about using Blackboard to expand what I am currently doing. Finally, I would highly recommend that faculty from any discipline in the University attend one of these conferences. I guarantee they would learn something from the many presentations which will help in improving their teaching