Notes from Student Panel, November 29, 2005 and November 30, 2005

The following is a reconstruction of notes taken during two sessions of students who talked to those faculty members present at an “Online Faculty Forum”.   Student names are pseudonyms.  The words by the students are certainly not exact quotations but are an attempt to capture the gist of their opinions and contributions.  Material in square brackets—[ ]—is explanatory material outside of the students’ words.  After the notes were reconstructed, the document (below) was given to the students involved, and the students were asked to check the document to make sure that their opinions and contributions were represented accurately.  Changes were made until students agreed that the document was an accurate representation of what they had said.

Sevierville, November 29, 2:45 until 4:00

• Joan is an adult learner who is talking about two courses she took online last year.  Both courses were offered through ETSU and RODP.  The professors were physically located at MTSU and ETSU.  Joan is physically located in Gatlinburg.
• Jerry is an employee of the college and is talking about his experience as an undergraduate taking courses for his BS degree.  The professors offered the courses online through the college Jerry was attending as a residential student.
• Various faculty members are represented by “Faculty.”

 
Both students were invited to talk about what worked well for them in their online courses, what did not work well for them in their online courses, and what they would like from an online professor. 

Joan: One thing they had us do was to make a student homepage for ourselves.  [This is an option that course designers have to enable in WebCT before it is possible for students to create, just as the “compile” function in WebCT is possible for students only after the designer has enabled this function in the course.]  Everyone did it.  I got to know the other students from their homepages.  Having a student homepage made it more like an on-ground class.  I could “see” the students as I was talking to them in discussion and feel more like it was a class.  My Social Psychology class was really good for this.  I read everyone’s student homepage.  I could put a face with the work in the discussion board.

Faculty: How did you use the discussion board?

Joan: We used it like chat in real time.  The professor had everything ready for us when we came into the class.  We could see that he was going to require us to be in front of our computers at a certain day and time each week.  He had questions for us [in course content] that we were going to answer in the discussion board.  We would make our contributions in discussion board and he would participate and he would say “whoa...maybe we need to come back to the middle here’ and guide the conversation in the discussion board.  And we immediately got a grade for our participation.

Faculty: Would you recommend that faculty require discussion board postings?

Joan: Definitely.  It made the class in both of my classes.

Faculty: Would you take another online class?

Joan: I’ll take another one.  I have 18 hours to go [all of which will be online courses].  The classes were challenging.  I had to read 3 to 4 hours each night to be ready for the class.  We had readings in the textbook and then we had readings from out on the web.  There were links [in the content modules] that we had to click on and then read.  I printed the stuff out from the web.  I can’t read and concentrate when reading from the web.  I needed those pages printed out.  It was a lot of stuff to read.  We also had practice quizzes over the material and then later, after a couple of modules, we had a test [online in WebCT].

Faculty: How did all that work go for you?

Joan: At first I had a problem because I had a dial-up modem, and things just didn’t work out.  I had to get my husband to get me a faster modem and then when that happened, things clicked into place.  I could stay connected, and I could download from the web fast enough to participate in the course.

Faculty: How did you stay in touch with the faculty member?

Jerry: We had 24-hour turn-around time for emails.  We also had the personal [college] email if he WebCT email wasn’t working.  But I would definitely say that the professor has to give 24-hour turn-around time on emails.  Otherwise, you don’t feel like you are a part of the class even when you are putting out an effort to “attend.”  One of my professors also required chat, but we knew that going into the class.  It was on the syllabus.

Joan: That’s important.  Whatever the professor does, he needs to do it firmly.  Online has to be a disciplined thing and the professor has to start it by having it all up there when you enter the class.

Jerry: I had one class where everything was up there and you could do it all at your own pace as long as you turned in everything by the end of the term.  There was no interaction from the professor.  You just did it.  That wasn’t a class.  All I remember from the class was that the textbook had a green cover.  I don’t remember anything else.  I made an A, but it wasn’t a real class.

Joan: Yes.  The professor has to be involved with feedback.  We had due dates all during the term.  This thing was due the first week, and that thing was due the second and so on. After a couple of modules we had a test.

Faculty: What would be your advice to a professor who has taught his class a time or two and wants to do a better job?

Jerry: The professor has to give quick responses.  If I don’t get an answer to an email after 24 hours, it’s not much help to me.  I have moved on to the next thing in the class already, probably.  If I were taking a course on ground and I handed in a paper, I would expect the paper back to me by the next class or at least by the next week of the course.  Certainly, if the professor has to grade 40 essays, I understand that it will take a while, but he could hand some back at the next meeting.  The same is true in an online class; if I don’t get quick feedback from a paper or test, I don’t benefit from it.

Faculty: So what does a faculty member need to know to make him or her look like a seasoned, veteran online professor?

Jerry: He needs to know how to manipulate the things in the course.  Maybe you need to make some prerequisites that a faculty member needs to know and be able to do before he can teach an online class.

Joan: Everything needs to be in the class when I enter it.  Everything needs to be laid out. 

Jerry: He needs to have the calendar completely filled out, he needs all the tests there, he needs the drop box there, he needs the discussion board [topics] constructed.  He needs to make sure there are no surprises for the student after the student is in the course.

Joan: In the course where I used the textbook and then used the Internet, I knew exactly all that I would have to do when I first came into the course. That didn’t change. It was all there when I came in.  We utilized the textbook and the web for readings, but he had it all planned out before I came into the course.

Jerry: There was one class I had that I knew was not planned out well.  The instructor had a standing assignment that we each had to make three discussion board postings each day.  We all knew there was no way he was going to read all that; there was no way he could possibly do it.  It finally got to the point that I would just copy and paste from what I said [posted] yesterday into today’s discussion board posting.  I knew he was just counting up the messages; he wasn’t opening them and reading them.

Joan: I knew I had a seasoned online professor when he guided the discussions in the discussion boards.  He was a facilitator, not just a teacher.  He knew how to handle the discussion boards.

Jerry: One of my seasoned professors sent out reminders of what was coming up next.  I already knew it [from the calendar] but when he sent a reminder of what was coming up next, I knew he was a seasoned online professor.

Faculty: If you were thinking about having a fully online degree where every course in that degree was available online, what student services do you think the online students would need?

Jerry: You would need to be able to order your books online, an online bookstore for the college.  It would have to be much better [than the current WSCC online bookstore]. 

Joan: You should be able to get your books through the mail [from the online WSCC bookstore—as with US Postal Service or UPS or FedEx].

Jerry: You should have a helpdesk for students who don’t know how to do everything in WebCT, and the helpdesk would have a phone where they can call for help in doing WebCT and computing.

Joan: And a FAQ page for that.

Jerry: You should have all the links fully connected from a central online page to the forms students need to fill out.  For example, when a student clicks on “change your major” in Star_Net it links to a page that says “come in to this office to fill out the form.”  It really should be the online form itself that can be submitted online.

Joan: You should have all your library needs fulfilled online, an online library and online databases.

Jerry: You need email advising. 

Joan: You need common rubrics across colleges so that the courses are easily transferable from one online college to another online college.

Joan: And you need online career counseling.

Jerry: What about an online kiosk for students, like InfoSys is now.  You need an online student newspaper.

Joan: You need academic calendars for the next couple of semesters up and available to all students so that they can plan ahead.

Jerry: You need a completely online timetable, not like WebForStudents, but like where you can build your schedule.    Right now, the [print] timetable doesn’t work for finding online courses since they are listed under the separate campuses but they are taught across all the campuses.  UT has this online now.

Faculty: So you are telling me all this that we need to do.  What do students need to know coming in? 

Faculty 2: Yes.  That’s been a real problem for me.  I have students who don’t know how to send me an email attachment inside WebCT.

Jerry: Students need to have a knowledge of WebCT and WORD and some simple computing things before they take an online class.  They need to know how to create a file in WORD, how to save a file in WORD, how to attach that file in WebCT email or put it in a drop box.

Joan: They need to know how to post to the discussion board.

Jerry: We really need to have a disclaimer in Star_Net, that when a student adds an online class they get a pop up window that says “Caution! You are registering for an online course.  Do you know how to do this and this and that.”

Morristown, November 30, 2:30 until 3:45

• Vivian is an employee of the college and is talking about her experience as a student in regular on-ground courses at WSCC, taking online courses through WSCC, taking online courses as a student in RODP, and taking online courses as a student at ETSU.
• Various faculty members are represented by “Faculty.”

Vivian is introduced to the audience of faculty members as a WSCC employee and as a student in online courses.  Faculty are also told that Vivian is the “go between” between students and RODP courses.

Vivian: When I talk to students about taking RODP courses online, I try to make students think the courses are harder than they really are.  Rather than getting into the course and thinking that it is going to be a piece of cake, I’d rather that students know what they are getting into with an online course.  I don’t want a student coming back to me and saying “You told me this was going to be easy, and now I am having to drop the course because I can’t do the online stuff and it is too hard.”  Instead, I’ve told them what it is going to be like to work online.

Faculty: Someone told me that there are certain disciplines on the WSCC campus that do not allow their students to take RODP classes.  I just wanted to know if that was true.

Vivian: Oh, yes.  That is true.  A couple of years ago when RODP started there were certain universities that would not allow their students to take any RODP courses.  There were certain universities that would not accept any RODP courses from their students even if the student had taken the RODP course previously at another institution.  That used to be true of UT.  But that has changed drastically now. 

Faculty: When you talk to students about taking the online classes and RODP, do you have a script?  Do you have a standard thing that you say to them?

Vivian: I’ve said that script so many times I don’t have to look at it any more.  I call it my “gloom and doom” speech.  I could recite it to you, and I have a print copy of it. 

Faculty: Do you tell students not to take certain classes online?

Vivian:  I do tell students not to take the developmental math classes online.

Faculty: What do you recommend they take?

Vivian: The English and history classes seem to go very well online. 

Faculty: What was the content like, what was the usual kind of thing you did in an online class that you took?

Vivian: I took the American History and the Tennessee History classes online.  In the American History class, we read from three books including the Portraits books and picked one of the famous people from there and wrote a research paper.  In the Tennessee History class, everything was writing essays.  When you do that kind of thing, I tell students you have to have a lot of self discipline.  You have to remember to meet all the deadlines.  I tell students to have their work done 24 hours in advance so that if they need to submit something and their home computer crashes, they can come to school or go somewhere else and submit their work online.  They also need to have a backup of all their work.  They need to save their work on their hard drive and then save it on a disk or CD or something like that, too.

Faculty: What do you think works best online?  What worked best for you online?

Vivian: All instructors are not created equal.  Some of them are really good.  Some are not too good.  Some instructors even want to help too much.  One instructor wanted to help students so much that he gave students his home phone number over Thanksgiving to call in case they needed him.  One instructor was in Iran the entire time.  I think he answered every [email] question I sent him within the hour.

Faculty: So it sounds like one of the most important things to students is that the instructor is good at communicating with students online.

Vivian: Yes.  Instructors have to answer emails and respond to student work in a reasonable amount of time.  Most of my instructors answer my emails by the next day.  If they do that, I’m fine.  Some instructors have not answered their email in two weeks.  One of the big things that an online student wants is quick feedback on the first couple of assignments and tests.  They need feedback as soon as possible.  Once the instructor has turned around the first couple of assignments back to you, you have a better idea of the kind of class this is going to be, the kind of things the instructor is looking for.  Then you get a feel for their teaching style from the feedback.  That is always a concern for students.  Students want feedback, especially at the beginning of the term, not so much at the end of the semester.  I do have a list of things that the students who couldn’t be here today had to say [that and about other issues].  

Faculty: Was that a complaint of students at WSCC—that faculty don’t get back to students quickly enough?

Vivian: Most student complaints about faculty are about not answering emails and not getting back to students or not responding quickly enough to student work.  There are a few instructors in RODP for whom trying to track them down is a problem.  Even using the resources that I have, you might be surprised at how much trouble I have in getting them to answer my phone calls and emails.

Faculty: Do you appreciate a class that requires constant participation from you as a student, or did you just want the kind of class that has deadlines and you turn the materials in?

Vivian: I don’t have a preference really.  The biggest complaint from students is communication from the online faculty member, wanting more detailed information than they usually get.  A one or two word email message is just not enough for students.

Faculty: You said earlier that some students want an alternate email available to them so that they can get in touch with a faculty member.  For example, students might want the faculty member’s college email available to them.  But, for me, I take my college email much less seriously than I take my WebCT email from students since my college email is so often cluttered up with spam and junk mail.  Could you talk about that?

Vivian: Students just want the feeling of security that another email address to the instructor provides.  They just want to feel that they can get in touch with the faculty member if WebCT is down.   They may not ever use that college email address; they just want to feel that if they had to, they could get in touch with their instructor.

[Vivian discusses the need to screen some students out of taking an online course.  Students need to have some minimum computing and WebCT competencies before tackling a completely online course.]

Faculty: Did you ever have any computer issues at home while taking your online classes?

Vivian: I have a dial up modem and do a lot of work here on my own time.  One time I was trying to upload a file into the drop box that was a final exam project.  I didn’t have any other version of the file saved.  This was in November.  Who would have thought that here in East Tennessee we would have a thunderstorm in November?  I was in the middle of uploading and lightening ran in on my computer, and it fried my hard drive.  The file was gone.  Now I have several different places to store back up copies of files.

Faculty: Yesterday, both students talked about the student services that need to be available fully online if we have fully online students at WSCC.  Can you talk about the student services we need to offer to our online students?

Vivian: We need all of them online.  Here is an example; I am a student at ETSU, and I have never set foot on their campus.  That is the kind of services we need to offer online to students.  We need financial aid online.  We need the library online, with databases.  I have done several research papers and projects online in my classes; the library and databases have to be online and available in the courses.

Faculty: Plagiarism has been a problem, especially with students just going out on the web and copying and pasting into a document.

Faculty 2: Several faculty members have said that.  Maybe we need to think about purchasing electronic means for detecting plagiarism [like DropItIn.com].

[Discussion among faculty about kinds of plagiarism, reasons for plagiarism, etc.]

Faculty 3: Talk to us about testing online.

Vivian: All the instructors do all kinds of different things with testing.  Some of my online classes have online testing.  Some of that online testing has been of the essay variety.  For example, in a history course the tests were all essays.  As a study guide, the instructor sent out some sample questions for writing.  When we got to the online test, there were 10 questions to choose from and we picked four.  We had two hours for the online essay test.  That meant that we had to write an essay each half hour, and we knew that certain points had to be addressed in each essay of the test, and then the test closed down.  There was no way to pull out your book and start looking for answers in that situation.  In some RODP classes, instructors have proctored midterms and finals.  In that case, students come in, have maybe 10 minutes to answer 15 multiple choice questions, but before they can open the test, the proctor has to enter in a password that has been provided by the instructor.  The student can’t see the test until the proctor enters the password.  Then the student has to answer the 15 questions.  And in some cases, the 15 questions are randomized so that no two students get the same questions.

Faculty: In your multiple choice question tests, did the instructor deliver all the questions at once or did you see just one question at a time?

Vivian: In my classes, the test questions were delivered all at once; I think I like that better.

Faculty: How do know when you have a seasoned online instructor for a professor in your online courses?  What tells you that your instructor is a veteran online professor?

Vivian:  In my database management course, the instructor had put up pages and pages of course content.  That was one way I could tell he knew what he was doing.  When an instructor says something like “if you want to know more about this, you can go look at this web site,” you know that you have a seasoned online instructor.  When an instructor gives you optional material out on the web to go with what you are doing in the class, then you know you have a seasoned online instructor.  When instructors don’t just say “read the textbook” for the course, then you know you have a seasoned instructor.

Faculty: Did you find PowerPoint slides helpful in your online courses?

Vivian: I’m not a big fan of Powerpoint.

Faculty 2: It’s hard to get content across online with PowerPoint.  You can only hit the highlights in certain subject matter.  But I will say that some students like PowerPoint slides in an online class since some students learn differently from other students.

Vivian: It can be hard to do PowerPoint slides well.

Faculty: Is there one thing that you would say to online professors that they should not do in an online class?

Vivian:  I had one class that was arranged like a pyramid.  That is, you couldn’t go on to Unit 2 and Test 2 until you got a certain passing grade on Unit 1 and Test 1.  You read a chapter, and then you took the test on it.  If you didn’t pass the test, you had to go back and read again, and then come back and take the test again.  You could come back and take the test again as many times as you would like.  But if you didn’t pass the test with a certain mark, you couldn’t go on to the next chapter.  Some students stayed at Chapter 1 and Test 1 for the whole class.  I didn’t like that at all.  The test you would see for Test 1 wouldn’t be the same exact questions on the second Test 1, but it would be over the same material and would be worded differently, but it was basically the same test.  You had an unlimited number of times to take the test.  That wasn’t good.  Also, one class I took just had way too much information and material crammed into one module.  The instructor didn’t think so, but I did.