Communicating Online

1
Communicating Online

• Rodger Oren, PMP
• Macon State College

2
Agenda

• Background
• Issues
• The Research
• Concluding Thoughts
• Questions?

3
Background

• Growth in online instruction
• Convenient
• Faculty?
• Student
• Cost-effective
• Location-independent

4
Background

• Statistics
• Capella Education Company
• 2004 Revenue - 117.70M
• 2004 Employees 1,372
• Students (2004?) 13,000

• Apollo Group, Inc. (Phoenix)
• 2005 Revenue - 2251.50M
• 2005 Employees 32,666
• Students (2005?) 200,000

5
Issues

• Isolation
• Who can help?
• Immediacy issues
• Technical Problems
• My computer does not work!
• Bandwidth (many use dial-up!)
• Lack skills of online web-searches (cant find
  information online)

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Issues

• Pedagogy
• Ambiguous instructions
• Professor Provides flexibility, more akin to
  real world problems
• Student I dont know what she wants! (I cant
  read their body language)

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Issues

• Time Management skills
• Students often lack them!

8
Issues

• Email
• email stripped of paralinguistic cues
  (intonation) and nonverbal messaging (eye
  rolling), can lead to ambiguity, naturally
  requiring more email. Thats why email
  conversations can drone on as much as five times
  as long as a telephone call (Sandberg, 2006).
• email is terrible for conversations (Sandberg,
  2006).

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Issues

• Email
• The best general tool
• Often misinterpreted
• Lacks the bandwidth of face-to-face communication
• Tone of voice
• Facial expressions
• Body language

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The Research

• Highly Technical Coursework
• Can be communicated successfully online
• Scheetz Gunter (2004) Sign Language
• Instructional Design dominates
• Little work in communication studies
• Drop-out High
• 50 (Reisetter Boris, 2004)

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The Research

• Hara Kling (2000) Heckman Annabi (2006)
• Students work alone, at odd hours (weekends,
  evenings)
• Can not get the instructor
• Problems remain unresolved
• Result Students are frustrated (often)
• Minimal Qualitative Research on factors, etc.
• Email is not read in a timely manner (students
  lack the time)
• Discussion groups suffer
• Teacher has difficulty for follow-up questions,
  answers or direct instructions to increase
  clarity of assignments

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The Research

• Reisetter Boris (2004) quoting Muilenburg
  Berge (2001)
• Three (3) Barriers for students
• Situational
• Individual where do I learn?
• Institution what help is available?
• Dispositional
• Individual perceptions, self-regulation
• Epistemological
• Efficacy of online learning process

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The Research

• Reisetter Boris (2004)
• Virtual Office Hours (Synchronous Communication
  IM, etc.)
• 69 found important
• 36 used
• Peer Chat (Discussion Group)
• 41 valued
• 25 used
• E-mail (Asynchronous Communication)
• 85 found e-mail important
• 73 used email

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The Research

• Reisetter Boris (2004)
• 27 not prepared for amount of time needed online
• 25 not able to complete tasks on-time
• Author concurs based on their anecdotal experience

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The Research

• Brescia Miller (2005)
• Peer Chat most useful
• Creates participative environment
• Make posts mandatory (rubric)
• Average post length 53 words (graduate English
  students)
• Author finds mixed results based on their
  anecdotal experience
• Posts failed for MSC as many students did not
  post
• Can work with PhD learners (Capella University)

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Concluding Thoughts

• Pedagogy changes in the online world
• Technology Support
• 24x7?
• Help Desk?

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Concluding Thoughts

• Email is the workhorse
• Asynchronous (Heckman Annabi)
• Emoticons can help
• Communicate little, but often
• Students need to read (thoroughly) their email

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Concluding Thoughts

• Students self-select the learning environment
  (Reistetter Boris, 2004)
• Student/Teacher partnership
• It is easy to place the burden of students
  frustrations wholly upon the instructors
  limitations (Hara Kling, 2000)

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Concluding Thoughts

• Teacher skills
• Computer savvy
• Email emoticon savvy
• Student skills
• Learn independently
• Computer savvy
• Highly Motivated
• This may be the major factor for success

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Concluding Thoughts

• High Quality instruction is not cheap or easy
  (Hara Kling, 2000)
• Distance Learning Assessment
• http//www.distancelearning.ufl.edu/Students/selfa
  ssessment.aspx

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References

• Brescia, Jr., W. F., Miller, M. T. (2005).
  Enhancing Graduate Students Performance As
  Threaded Discussion Leaders in a Web-Based
  Proposal Writing Course. The Quarterly Review of
  Distance Education, 6(4), 385-396.
• Hara, N., Kling, R. (2000). Students Distress
  with a Web-Based Distance Education Course.
  Retrieved September 7, 2006, from
  http//rkcsi.indiana.edu/archive/CSI/WP/wp00-01B.h
  tml.
• Heckman, R., Annabi, H. (2006). How the
  teachers role changes in on-line case study
  discussions. Journal of Information Systems
  Education, 17(2), 141-150.
• Reistetter, M., Boris, G. (2004). Student
  Perceptions of Effective Elements in Online
  Learning. The Quarterly Review of Distance
  Education, 5(4), 277-291.
• Sandberg, J. (2006, September 26). Employees
  Forsake Dreaded Email For the Beloved Phone. The
  Wall Street Journal, p. B1.
• Scheetz, N. A., Gunter, P. L. (2004). Online
  Versus Traditional Classroom Delivery of a Course
  in Manual Communication. Exceptional Children,
  71(1), 109-120.

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Questions?