Winter semester has just started on Jan 2 at the Vancouver Community College. For this semester, I will be teaching two courses - management skills and entrepreneurship - in a traditional classroom setting.
When I finished my class on the first day, I started thinking how I will be able to deliver the level of excitement and competitiveness in an online learning environment.
The students were placed in groups to create the tallest structure using marshmallow, spaghetti and some strings. They were given 20 minutes for this activity. I have been using this activity for the last three years in all my courses. Every time, I am simply amazed at how motivated and competitive these students are even when working in groups on such a simple task. I started to wonder how can I ever replicate such level of engagement and stimulation in an online learning environment where there is no face to face human interaction. While there are technologies such as Skype, Bluejeans, etc., that can provide some form of interactions, at this point, I am having a struggle in finding how I can ever replace that level of human interaction.
Also, most of my classes consist of 100% international students where English is not their first language. One of the learning objectives is to help them overcome their communication skills, especially verbal. While most of these students could write fairly well, it is their verbal communication skill that needs major improvements. Such skills are prerequisite for them to gain some practicum employment opportunities. Just before Christmas, I had a call from a potential employer for one of the past students. One of the questions asked by the prospective employer is "How is Jane Doe communication skill? She will be in frequent contacts with my clients and therefore, I need someone with strong written and verbal communication skills". As such, I started wondering perhaps not all courses can be conducted online. In some cases, online teaching may be used to complement traditional classroom learning environment. I plan to conduct more research including surveying my own students to get a better understanding of when and how should online teaching be used. I hope by the end of this program I will have a different perspective on this.
References:
Armstrong, S., "What Are The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Online Learning?", (2013, April 5), https://elearningindustry.com/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-online-learning
Dhirendra, K., "Pros and Cons of Online Education", (2015, Aug 19) , Retrieved from https://www.ies.ncsu.edu/resources/white-papers/pros-and-cons-of-online-education/