Hi group,
Today, I found an article on the web titled: Software for Online Student Interaction, http://www.stanford.edu/~marcelo/Teaching/Papers/SoftwareforOnlineStudentInteraction.pdf
It was an interesting article about the use of online instruction for economics at Stanford University. Essentialy it had two main components. The first looked at the issue of office hours and the student. They made several suggestions but the two that I thought were interesting was the use of a white board by the professor so he/ she could draw graphs, etc. and send them to the student while working in a chatroom. This would supplement the text discussion going on. The other was the idea of connecting a webcam so students could watch and interact with traditional oncampus students as they entered the office. They could listen to the questions and submit followup if desired. However, the camera would be turned off if private issues were being discussed. Both techniques would allow distance students to interact more like traditional students.
The other area discussed in the paper was the adaptation of classroom experiments for online use. The online biology classes at my school are only hybrids - the students must come on campus every two weeks for the lab component. However, it would be interesting to see if some of our labs could be modified to reduce this requirement. One area I think that I will look into is the use of case studies or webquests. I just have to find items that are level appropriate for my students.
Thanks,
Ken
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I wonder if a digital tablet-one that could project to a screen in the classroom and at the same time transmit images electronically to a chatroom-could be of better use than a whiteboard in this application. An interesting article; thanks for sharing it.
My college as well is interested in adapting classroom experiments for online use. We currently do not have any chemistry courses online, however, we have several hybrid biology courses which meet on campus for lab. For chemistry, we have discussed, however, we are concerned with the liability issue. Students must complete some type of experiment for such a course and if a student gets injured at home completing an experiment, who is liable for this? I have been to a few conferences that utilize virtual experiments such as Late Nite Labs (www.latenitelabs.com) or Virtual ChemLab (chemlab.byu.edu) for online courses. However, I feel that such simulation software are better to enhance traditional courses and provide pre-lab instruction rather than replace traditional labs. I have also heard of other colleges (such as Vincennes University in Indiana) that have its students complete projects at home and then mail them in for credit. However, there is still a liability issue here.
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