Towards the Next Course

Each semester, I keep a journal entitled "For Next Time," into which I put items that occurred to me during this semester about things I would like to do differently next semester. Of course, these would only be things that I cannot change this semester.

While many of the items are specific to a particular course, some are applicable to common elements of different courses. What I'm going to post here are elements that are specific to online elements of almost any course I might teach.

This semester I had a wide range of student capabilities with respect to WebCT, computer use, and familiarity with the whole idea of distance education. Focusing on WebCT, next time I plan to monitor the situation more closely than I did this time. Specifically,

This time I started by making sure that each student could send me an e-mail via WebCT, download and submit an assignment, and completing a quiz. There were a few stragglers, but by the end of the second week pretty much everybody could do this. However, I missed a few items:

• At this point, after taking five quizzes, some people are still taking an hour to complete a five minute quiz. I need to check this sooner next time. Also, I think the people that are taking an hour may be taking the quiz before reading the material. Next time, I think I'll make the quiz available a few days later then the associated assignment and emphasize the fact that the student should complete the assignment first. (I can do this now, but next time I should do it from the start.)
• This time, I had a unit zero covering some WebCT basics, but I did not cover this in the assignment or quiz for week one. Next time, I will ask specific questions in the first assignment about such things as where to find class notes, how to find feedback, where the self check exercises are, and how to properly respond to e-mail and discussion board posts. ( use quote for e-mail and reply for posts).
  
• Then, in problem set 2, ask for specifics from the feedback and notes from problem set one. Also, have at least one exercise that refers specifically to a particular self checked exercise. This should expose any uncertainty early. This time, too many students were not aware of these elements in spite of several announcements about them.