Online learning is more that just reading a book on the Web! Online learning includes lots of interaction between students and their instructors as well as their peers. We might learn on line for college credit, for professional development, or for fun!
Guests
Linda Jorn
Linda Jorn
Linda Jorn is Director of the Digital Media Center at the University of Minnesota. She works faculty, staff and students to provide a strong instructional and technological infrastructure. She chairs the Big Ten Learning Technologies group and is a member of a national Committee focusing on Teaching and Learning.
Professor Ann Hill Duin
Professor Ann Hill Duin
Professor Ann Hill Duin has taught at elementary, secondary, collegiate, and corporate levels in the U.S. and abroad. She has also designed and studied online learning environments in all of these settings. Dr. Hill-Duin designed the first fully online graduate course at the University of Minnesota. She is currently the Associate Dean for Academic Programs for the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences at the University.
Cheri Pierson Yecke
Cheri Pierson Yecke
Cheri Pierson Yecke is Commissioner of Minnesota Department of Education. The Commissioner is responsible for articulating and implementing education policy for the entire K-12 system, which represents 42% of the entire state budget.
Dr. Yecke has most recently worked as the Director of Teacher Quality and Public School Choice in the U.S. Department of Education, working on the impact of the new federal 'No Child Left Behind' act. During that time, she was detailed to The White House as a Senior Advisor to the USA Freedom Corps.
For Your Files
Linda Jorn explained how online learning is more that just reading a professors book on the Web. She told us 83% of those students at four campuses had taken a web enhanced course. Web enhanced means students still meet face to face the same amount of time, but the instructor is using the Web to enhance the course. The next stage is a Web centric, or hybrid course, where there is a decreased amount of face to face time students meet and professors design learning activities online. From there we move over to the fully online course where students are dispersed at different locations and take a course where all of the learning appears online. Students in these courses may meet face to face once at the start of the class, and possibly again at the end. There's a lot of variety in online courses.
Minnesota Education Commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke had strong convictions about online learning at certain grade levels.
"I don’t think online learning, especially in the elementary and middle school grades, will ever really replace a good classroom teacher. But it can be used to supplement classroom instruction."
Professor Ann Hill Duin said is not just for college students.
"[A lot of online learning is] for professional reasons. If I want to be certified in something additional, or if I want to be prepared for a different aspect of my work. But [a lot of] it is also personal. People study gardening, they study wine, they study whatever they are personally interested in. Online learning bridges both the credit side and the non credit side."
Professor Hill Duin describes the trials and tribulations of teaching an online course:
"You have to plan more, you have to be more organized, I believe, than in the face to face environment. You have to plan for the interaction, you have to plan for the information that the students will get. You have to be more of a mentor and a guide, and facilitate so that the students will learn from their peers. It be comes far more work and [labor] intensive if you rely on yourself as the sole person that all those e-mail messages can come to. But if designed well, the students can have a much richer interaction with their peers and with experts from around the world."
Web-Centric Course
Courses that have reduced face-to-face instruction and include
online learning activities.
Web-Enhanced Course
Courses meet face-to-face, but are enhanced by online
activities.