Webb’s Media

This presentation, by a history professor at VWCC, outlined his strategies for organizing his course online in order to support learners.

He described his objective as trying to identify those that want to be there, and try to engage them so they will persist and succeed in the class. He shared his online orientation: http://www.vw.vccs.edu/vwhansd/HIS_Main/Menu.html.

Some of the things he modeled were grading policy for the discussion board, rubric, graph connecting discussion board participation with grade (it’s possible to do well without contributing to the discussion board, as he also described one student who got a B without participating), suggestions for threaded discussion. All of these are really essential components in an online course (or rather rubrics and examples are essential for any course where projects, threaded discussion, journaling are taking place).

The real take-away from this presentation was his wording on his site, that the course would require: “Continuous attention, thoughtful communication, and reflective thinking. The discussion board is our vehicle for progressing through the course as a class, not merely as individual sharing a common experience.” This would be the ideal for the online learning experience, and I hope that more faculty see it in this manner.

However, the comments correlating spelling and grammatical style (or lack thereof) to intelligence (ie, example of student who wrote in a “valley girl style” being a moron and his graduate student daughter spelling like a “not very smart eighth grader”) became tedious, as this came up several times over the course of the presentation. I get it, it’s a pet peeve, but each of us has different strengths, and in fact, these comments bespeak a prejudice that can alienate students who might have a learning disability that prevents their success in these areas–but who will have great ideas that add to the course communication. And to be clear, I’m not advocating accepting without critique assignments with errors and poor grammar. I’m just suggesting that labeling students lacking in certain skill areas as “stupid” is a potential recipe for discouraging students who may be talented in other ways.