Experience
The experience lived throughout online courses is
variable from person to person, and also from one course to another. Personally,
my average practice in the online context has not been the best. I believe that
the negative feeling I have acquired towards these courses in general has been
because many teachers are not ready to confront the reality of delivering when
they are not face to face and think a previously designed platform will do all
the work for them. For instance, I have had teachers who do not reply to either
e-mails or leave any feedback regarding the activities done during the course,
even less set objectives, or care about who the students are.
Fortunately, the three distance classes I had this
semester in particular were all much better than the once I had experienced in
the past. I believe now that the reason why previous subjects appeared
meaningless was precisely because of the lack of feedback; I often felt lost
and believed I would never manage to do any better (or bluntly satisfy my “teacher”)
so on, my efforts went down. Now I know “feedback can also be provided to the learners on how
they can improve learning” (Dooley, 2003) and that this being not received
was affecting my development, and this experience has led me – and I hope more
people- to try and not be like these so called teachers. Being there for the
student even when classes are not face to face is one of the features that will
lead to an adequate online course.
Advantages
One of the main advantages and perhaps the reason why
many people prefer to study online is because of the accessibility the
schedules offer. “Online learners tend to work at least one job, have family
responsibilities, and take one or more online courses at a time, their time is
limited” (Porter,
2004) but when taking distance classes, they do not
even have a need to assist to a physical place and can organize their learning
according to their needs and availability.
Secondly, some
people can be shy when they are in public. The online course offers these kind of
students the opportunity to participate by writing down their opinion about the
topic they are seen, making them feel comfortable and not exposed as in a face
to face class. Here, they also receive individual feedback from the teacher,
which they most likely would have not experienced within a classroom.
Additionally, by
making this course individualized, each student can focus on improving their
own work instead of dealing with the struggles of their group was a whole,
where their language improvement can be made aside for a while and focus only
on their actual learning regarding the subject they are studying.
Disadvantages
Of course, no class is perfect, and online subjects
have their faulty side as well. Deadlines become the first struggle for the
students, especially when they are not well-organized. While there are teachers
who have a structured set of deadlines, there are those who do not. Sometimes
there will be no work, and in some other occasions, work must be done from one
day to the other due to the lack of structure. It must be remembered that the reason
why most of these students take the course online is because of the accessible schedules
and the opportunity they have to work on their own time, and not having a
well-developed deadline system will result in aggravation towards these people
because all control they believed they could have becomes reduced to
practically none.
Added to the organization mentioned,
although this has not been our case, online courses can occur locally, nationally,
or internationally. This phenomenon is affected directly by the different time
zones, where the difference in time can vary from one hour to a whole set of
eight ours or perhaps more, which can result in an inadequate set of opportunities
of success throughout the course for each student.
Also, a note to take into account is
the fact not all students have access to a personal computer as they please.
Many students will not possess a device at hand either because they do not have
one at all or because they share it with one or more people, and this is the
reason why the they must be given time to schedule their plans when it comes to
their assignments. In the same way, sometimes the system itself can go down,
all the way from the platform to the internet service of one particular area,
so here the accessibility of the teacher will play its part; the instructor
must be aware that sometimes the learner cannot control some of the circumstances
around him.
Suggestions
To improve the online courses that were not good so
far I would encourage the teachers to take a class in how to develop through an
online platform. The fact the learners must be autonomous in their learning
does not mean the teacher has no job to be done. In this way, if they do not
wish or cannot be available at any time the students require them, they could
and should set a schedule and the days they are willing to receive the learners’
e-mails as well as an approximate if days it will take them to reply.
In the same way, deadlines must be organized, and
according to Porter, 2004, if a deadline is established, that date must be
respected. Students should be able to organize the way in which they work according
to their needs. Here is also the place where worldwide communication takes
place: if students’ live in different areas, a deadline should be set for each
place according to the moment in which the assignment was submitted, and this,
of course, can be calculated by the platform itself, this to give every student
the same time and opportunities to develop their work.
Bibliografía
Dooley, L. D. (2003). Advanced Methods in
Distance Education: Applications and practices for educators, administrators
and learners. Texas: INFOSCI.
Porter. (2004). Developing an Online
Curriculum. London: Information science publishing.
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