Lack of Material Designed for In-class Activities

One primary difficulty I encountered while teaching the class was thus the lack of co-ordinated materials for in-class activities. The materials for the class were primarily designed with the distance learning sections in mind. Therefore, we spent a great deal of time devising strategies that would work well for students working independently with little interaction from the teacher. For example, we devoted considerable time to the writing of clear directions to assignments, providing models and explanations, and devising methods to give students sufficient feedback on their work. Once the course began, it was clear that, although both the distance and face-to-face classes were using the same instructional material, the nature of the class, the type of instruction and hence the type of assessment that was feasible were different in the online and face-to-face sections.

For example, the lead professor on the project, through past experience with online learning, suggested that we avoid planning activities that required a great deal of coordination between students. While we planned peer review for both the online and face-to-face classes, we minimized other types of peer activities, such as writing collaboratively and critiquing each other's work. Although meeting face-to-face gave me a much greater opportunity to work collaboratively, there was no class material prepared to help to facilitate this peer collaboration. The lack of collaborative activities in the online version also did not give students the chance to work on one of the learning goals of the course - the ability to work collaboratively in teams.

No effort was made to place any activities or exercises of the face-to-face class, since we spent most of the planning time focussing on the students in the distance education classes. This meant, however, that I had to spend a great deal of time thinking about what to do in class. This was not a particular problem for the other two professors teaching face-to-face sections, as they had taught English 302B before. I, on the other hand, was new to the course and therefore did not have as many activities already developed that I could use in class. The material in WebCT worked well as reading and writing assignments, but I was at a loss about what to do in class, especially since there was no textbook which I could glean for ideas. I did try to make use of the writing handbook which students purchased, but it did not contain any exercises.

I started the semester confident that I was well-prepared for teaching this course. All the material was ready and so was I. In fact, I encountered more work than if I had been using a traditional textbook. In effect, I had a vast archive of homework assignments, and once I started teaching, I was left to create all the handouts and materials for in-class activities. Thus, although WebCT gave us the opportunity to create a substantial archive of class material, which seemed to offer a fully prepared course to all the instructors, in actually created, in a sense, more work for the face-to-face instructors.

Adapting Online Learning Material for Face-to-Face Classes

Teaching with Technology in a "Wired" Classroom