Tuesday, January 11, 2000

LOGGING IN WITH . . . Ken W. White Advice for the Online Instructor: Keep It Interpersonal By JEFFREY R. YOUNG Ken W. White is a co-author of The Online Teaching Guide, a new guidebook intended to help professors run effective online courses. Mr. White has taught on the Web for the University of Phoenix for seven years, and he also keeps up his "regular" teaching gig as a professor of education at Everett Community College, in Washington State. His expertise lies in education and organizational communication, and he says that interpersonal-communication techniques are particularly important in an online environment, where there are fewer verbal and physical cues to help smooth dialogue. The book was published by Allyn & Bacon in October. Q. It seems like your book isn't about technology, but about strategies for adding a human touch to online education. A. We assume that the readers of this book -- either new online instructors or seasoned online instructors -- have a handle on the technology. What we're really trying to say is that the online environment can be and should be an interpersonal environment. We think that we want to move away from the kind of correspondence-course model -- where students send in assignments to an instructor who sends back feedback to those assignments -- to one in which there is a dialogue and interaction taking place in the online medium that really transform people and allow their personalities to come across the medium. Q. Could you give a few other quick examples of techniques a professor can use to improve teaching in an online course? A. I think that one of the key factors in order to keep it interpersonal is limiting the number of students that are able to join it. Also, you want to treat students as unique. You want to use their names, for example. Whenever you respond to a student's message, you always should include their name and let them recognize that you're speaking directly to them. That lets you create more of a sense of warmth in the classroom. Q. Something that small can make a difference? A. Yeah -- we've got to be sensitive to the details. Because we're trying to create a climate here or add to a climate that adds warmth. Another technique, so to speak, is responsiveness. The whole idea of responding is very important. We try to make a rule that we respond to every message within 24 hours, at least, and sooner if possible. Q. Why is that important? A. It sends a message to the student that their questions and their comments are important, and that the faculty member is visible and involved. And that keeps the discussions current. If we fall behind, the questions and discussions can go off on tangents that might not be very useful. Q. What is the biggest mistake or misconception that professors have when they first try online teaching? A. One common mistake is that they're not aware of how much work it is. It can be extremely labor-intensive, because it's all reading. Once students get discussing, they can create quite a few messages that can literally overwhelm an instructor. So one of the things we emphasize in the book is to be aware of that structure, and how to structure a class. Q. In the introduction to your book, you call it a "survival manual." Why is that? A. I've heard many stories from new online instructors that entering the online environment -- where they don't have any kind of face-to-face communication and the normal communication cues -- things can take place that they feel sometimes helpless to manage. In particular, having a discussion in an online classroom where the topic is somewhat controversial can easily lead to what we call "flaming." Students can become very blunt and aggressive, and discussions quickly get out of hand and get very personal. And sometimes there've been occasions where instructors don't survive that situation because it is so unmanageable for them that some other instructor has to come in and really deal with it. That can be responded to by setting up norms and rules for the classroom that bring these issues up right at the beginning, and then you've got a foundation with which to manage any conflict that may result. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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