Summer 2001

Volume 3 Number 3
A publication of Macon State College

The Virtual Classroom

Online Education An Increasingly Important Part Of Macon State College's Academic Program

By Sheron Smith

When Dr. Amy Berke taught an online version of freshman English for the first time a year ago, she quickly realized she was going to have to check her ego at the virtual door.

"One of the first things I learned is that the hierarchical nature of the class disappears," said Berke, an assistant professor of English. "The instructor is no longer 'sage on the stage,' but more of a 'guide on the side.' At first I found that ego-flattening, but it's been liberating for the students. They take more responsibility for learning and feel more powerful in that environment."

A novelty just a few years ago, online courses now play a highly visible role in reshaping teaching and learning in Macon State College's New Century atmosphere. During the 1999-2000 academic year, the college offered 10 sections of online courses, mostly in accounting and computer applications, with a combined enrollment of 174 students. In the 2000-2001 academic year, including this summer, the college offered 37 sections of online courses with a combined enrollment of 655.

Laura Swinney (top), an MSC sophmore, likes the 'anytime, anyplace' convenience of the online English class she takes from Dr. Amy Berke (bottom). Here, Swinney checks out the course webpage while visiting at her boyfriend's house. Berke works in her office.

Beyond those numbers, many courses in various academic disciplines have become significantly "Web-enhanced." In a Web-enhanced class, students have regular face-to-face contact with the instructor but use many Internet-based resources, such as discussion boards or course webpages that may include some combination of text, animation, graphics or video.

An online course uses many of those same resources, but the majority of interaction between the instructor and students takes place electronically.

From Berke's English 1102 course webpage, for example, students follow links to read the poetry of Sylvia Plath online, then "meet" in a chatroom to discuss her work. In an online IT course, students can watch a video over the Web to see a demonstration of how to replace memory chips inside personal computers. In an online economics course, students can access a Web tutorial that explains the concept of supply vs. demand.

"This is just the beginning of an exciting transition in higher education," said President David A. Bell. "I see some phenomenal things happening in the next few years. Rather than being two distinct worlds, the traditional classroom experience and online education are integrating into a variety of interactive models for teaching and learning. Our job is to create the richest electronic environment we can to produce top-quality online courses and enhance the traditional college experience."

IT Leads the Way

Besides growing in number, Macon State online courses are more diverse now, with choices ranging from information technology to business to health sciences to English. The Learning Support division is in the act as well, recently offering an online version of a writing lab designed to help students prepare to take the Regents Test.

Leading the way in the development of online education at Macon State is the School of Information Technology, which expects to have all eight IT core courses available online by the end of the 2001-2002 academic year. Through Georgia GLOBE, the state's electronic learning network, Macon State will place the entire IT degree curriculum online within a few years. Toward that end, the IT division has taken on the challenging task of finding ways to simulate online some of the most hands-on aspects of the degree program, such as a computer concepts course in which students study the architecture of hardware and operating systems software.

The IT division has also collaborated with the Macon State College Educational Technology Center, which trains schoolteachers how to integrate technology into the classroom, to offer a 30-credit-hour online certificate program in educational technology. The program's students - a combination of educators who aspire to be technology specialists at their schools and others seeking second careers - come from nearly all regions of the state.

"The number of completely online IT students from around the state is growing and will surely become a significant factor in years to come as we, and they, get better at it," said Dr. Bill Elieson, the IT division's chair. "I hope that we will soon reach a point where every IT student takes at least some classes online."

Title III Grant

Macon State's development of online education and other technology-driven academic resources got a major boost last year when the U.S. Department of Education awarded the college a $1.75 million grant under the "Strengthening Institutions" program, commonly known as Title III.

Among other things, the funding allowed Macon State to expand the staff of the technology support services department. The new personnel include Stacy Kluge, an instructional designer, and Geoffrey G. Dyer, multimedia developer. They, along with Phil Wetherington, instructional technology support specialist, are training faculty members how to use technological tools that help them create Web-enhanced or online courses.

The grant is also helping to pay for the development of broadband (high-speed) Internet access at Macon State, as well as other infrastructure crucial to building online resources for students and faculty or otherwise integrate technology into the classroom. In fact, most of the Title III project's goals relate to innovative teaching. The integration of technology into the curriculum will engage students in active learning, an approach that research has shown increases the chances they will stay in school and finish their degrees.

Online Advantages

The advantages of online courses to students include their efficiency and the ability to look at and listen to course material as needed. But the most oft-cited advantage of online courses is their flexibility. One reason Christy Shannon, 26, decided to take Berke's online English class is that it eliminated the need to arrange for childcare for her 5-year-old daughter.

"As long as you have access to the Internet, you can participate in class from the beach if you'd like, which I actually did," said Shannon, who plans to transfer to the University of Florida. "Another advantage was the computer skills I picked up. I was somewhat computer-illiterate so I was a little intimidated in the beginning."

Sam Franklin, 35, an information management major in the business & IT degree program, has taken two online accounting courses from Dr. Patti Impink, a business professor. Franklin, information systems branch chief for the Georgia Air National Guard, said he would pursue the entire degree online if all the courses were available in that format.

"I'm married, I've got three little ones and my job is pretty demanding," Franklin said, "so the flexibility is really a blessing."
Macon State faculty who teach online classes say they also like the flexibility, although some note that they have to invest more time in such courses.

"An experienced teacher can give a lecture (in a traditional class) from an outline of notes," said Dr. John Edwards, an associate professor of IT who teaches online courses in computer interface design. "But in an online course you can't teach from notes, you have to post pages of detailed text. Another difference is that in a traditional class an instructor has different ways of gauging students' understanding: are they looking at you or just sitting there with their eyes glazed over?

"Teachers can use those dynamics to change their approach, literally in the middle of class. Online, you don't see the students as a group, so you can't use those dynamics. What you have to do is use as many approaches to teaching as possible and hope at least one of them works. All of this takes more time."

Berke agrees that classroom dynamics are very different online, which is not necessarily a drawback. Two or three students cannot dominate discussion in an online environment, creating opportunities for those who may be reluctant to speak up in a traditional class.
"Students just seem to be less self-conscious in an online class," Berke said.

Impink said many of her students actually seem to interact more in the virtual environment.

"I require students to participate in online discussions and they all get to know each other by 'screen' personality," she said.

Requires Self-Discipline

But as nearly every instructor of online courses is quick to note, the virtual classroom isn't for everybody. Students who register for online courses thinking they will require less work usually find the opposite to be true.

"I thought it would be easier than going to a classroom, but it's been a lot of work to get everything posted online by the deadlines," said Laura Swinney, another of Berke's English students. " I've put more time into this class than a lot of my other classes."

Franklin said the self-discipline he's developed through his military career serves him well when he takes an online course. "But I can see if you're not self-disciplined it could really bite you in the rear," he said.

Impink said some of her online students drop the course when they realize they have to invest more time guiding their own learning.

"These courses are great as far as scheduling convenience," she said, "but they are not easier. Some students just don't want to put in that extra time."

Dr. Janice Edens, an English professor who also teaches freshman composition online, posted on her website a checklist students can review to help them decide if online courses are for them. Berke also uses the checklist, which gets students to ask themselves if they have the self-discipline and organizational skills it takes to complete coursework outside the structure of a traditional class. Edwards hopes the college can eventually require students who register for online courses to participate in short orientations so they'll know what to expect.

Quality of Instruction

At Macon State, students in online courses must come to campus once or twice per semester to take exams or fulfill other class requirements. (For students outside of Central Georgia, Macon State arranges with the nearest University System institution to give exams.) One obvious reason is the need for an instructor to make sure that the student who registered for the online course is actually the one doing the work, but also because a dash of face-to-face interaction seems to enhance the virtual experience.

"I like the hybrid of the personal interaction with the efficiencies of online," said Elieson, who has taught online classes in the educational technology certificate program in which he met face-to-face with the students one Saturday a month. "That social interaction makes the asynchronous interaction more meaningful."

Even so, Dr. Mike Staman, Peyton Anderson Professor of Information Technology, predicts that evolving technology will enable instructors and students to create a sense of community online without ever meeting face-to-face. He and his students in some online IT seminar classes he teaches are experimenting with creating what Staman calls a "collaboratory."

In a scenario described by Staman, teams of students could hold meetings online using tools that are freely available over Internet, or soon will be, but not merely through chatrooms.

"They can talk to each other because all have purchased a $10 microphone they've plugged into their PC and they use their speakers for sound," Staman said. "They can see each other through a $40 camera that they mount on the top of their PC. They could share desktops on their computers, so members of the team could watch one person do something. They would have a shared whiteboard on which, like the blackboard in the classroom, they can diagram, erase and modify each other's diagrams because it is a common space. Sharing elements of their projects is very easy because an instantaneous file-transfer feature is included.

"So the idea is to create a virtual meeting space which is actually a bit better (in some ways) than a real meeting space. After all, when the meeting is over each member of the team just saves the files and a full record of the meeting, the teaching, the examples and the modifications are saved for future reference on each member's PC."

As the technology evolves, the demand for online education is certain to grow, although nobody at Macon State believes it will replace the regular college experience --- nor that it should. The challenge, as Bell said, is to make sure the quality of online education grows along with the demand.

"How we respond to that demand should be an ongoing discussion," Berke said. "We always want to make sure the quality of instruction is our primary consideration."