What will these numbers be like for her?
I am just getting back into the ’swing’ of coursework and housework after coming home with my brand new baby girl! Raegan Lorraine Foster was born on Sunday, May 31st at 4:36 pm. Finding some time to think and reflect on the coursework and the video has been harder than I originally thought!
The video, “Did You Know”, paints an awesome picture of world demographics and how they have changed since I was a teenager; which led me to think long and hard about how they would continue to change before Raegan becomes a teenager. It’s amazing to think that she will never know a camera couldn’t show you instantly what the picture was or that live television couldn’t always be stopped and rewound, recorded and watched later. I wonder what else will come about in her lifetime? How will online education change and improve in the next 10-20 years? Some of these questions I cannot even fathom.
Thinking about who our online students are today helps tremendously in the design and development of course activities and that has come into play for me while working on my Course Outline and my Course Profile for my online class project, Menu Planning and Design. I have already encountered some ’snags’ in the changing over of my course from its traditional format to its online format. One of those is my menu collection. In the course, we spend a lot of time looking at and evaluating real menus from industry and some of their attributes cannot be replicated in an online format. Does this mean that the experience of the students online will not be as enriched as others? I don’t think so, it just means I have to be creative and discover other ways to share and discuss this information.
Compared to the majority of students surveyed in the SLN student demographics from 2004, I know that students enrolling in my course are younger and mostly first time students; which will ulitmately affect how my online course is taught. Many of them, while very computer and technology literate, have not taken an online course before and have trouble or apprehension getting acclamated to the layout of the course. I have seen this in my advisees who are enrolled in hybrid courses on campus and, because of my experience as an online student, have been able to help them.
The question that arises from this issue is, “How can we help college freshman be successful in online classes?” Maybe, as instructors, we need to spend a little more time on orientation to the course and the LMS employed, or maybe we need to start slower and build expectations as skills and comfort levels increase among the students. One of my philosophies on education is that we should make it easy for our students to succeed. (I don’t mean easy as in not challenging, just that we need to provide them with the tools and skills necessary to get the most out of their learning experience and not get hung up on ‘technical difficulties’ that arise from venturing into a new learning environment.) That will be my goal in designing my online course.
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