Value creation. Differentiation advantage. Competitive positioning. What do those terms mean to you? Any MBAs out there? Anyone? I don’t have an MBA, but recently, those terms have come to mean more to me in the university context.
If you read Online Learning for Free?, the blog entry my colleague Elizabeth Schinazi posted a few weeks ago, you may already be on the same dog-eared and coffee-stained page.
Elizabeth closed her post with the following statement: I think it’s important that as a university we keep track of our “competition.” Specifically, Elizabeth was stressing the importance of keeping track of the burgeoning number of free online offerings in higher education.
I couldn’t agree more with Elizabeth. DePaul needs to keep track of the competition. I would also go a bit further and say that it is important that we as faculty keep track of our competition. I have heard several professors lament that free online universities will eventually put us all out of jobs. Even James Gee, the renegade speaker and scholar at the DePaul Faculty Teaching and Learning Conference last week, opened his keynote talk in crisis mode. “Everyone agrees [that higher ed] is in a crisis,” he announced. “But no one agrees on a solution.”
But, truth told, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. If you’ve been to a motivational workshop recently, or better, attended one of FITS director Sharon Guan’s introductory Chinese courses, you know that the Chinese character for “crisis” includes the character for “opportunity.” I truly believe that the changing higher ed market presents a golden opportunity for us to reconsider the value that we as hybrid and online faculty bring to our students. What differentiates our online courses from the free options? Why will students sign up for our classes next quarter and not the free web offerings? Answering these questions will help us capitalize on the value we bring.
So, where do you start? Although determining the value of your courses will be a continual work in progress, here are a few near-term suggestions to assist you in making your online course the more desirable option for students.
Commit to Office Hours. Select two hours on different days when you can be available to students. If you teach a hybrid or fully online course, plan to log in to Skype for two scheduled hours each week. If you find your students don’t show up, let them know that you noted their absence and hope they will come talk with you. Find out if there are better times for them to meet with you. All too often, professors choose to offer “office hours available on request.” Any student who is already hesitant to reach out for help may fear that he/she will be a burden by requesting special time.
Establish Your Presence on the Discussion Boards. Read and respond to your students’ posts. It’s that simple. It takes time to do—it does. But the time and thought the students will put in to the discussion board is directly proportional to your felt presence on the boards. In addition, why not have your students create questions to propose to their classmates about the course content? You could then answer their questions and participate as ‘one of them’ as opposed to ”the man behind the curtain.”
Provide Substantive Feedback on Assignments. Providing substantive feedback requires time, but the more you prepare on the front end, the less time it will require when it comes to grading. Create a detailed rubric for each assignment. Not only will this let your students know your expectations, it will help you clarify what is and isn’t working about a student’s submission. Then, when you provide an additional two to three sentences of feedback, the student will more likely feel effectively ‘read.’
Link to Campus Services. This is a biggie. A recent Instructional Technology Council survey tracking the impact of eLearning at community colleges pointed to the necessity of maximizing student and technology support services for the virtual student. Your online students are probably underusing DePaul’s available resources. In your syllabi, be sure to outline the services available. In addition, provide multiple links to campus tech support and other student support services on your course homepage and throughout the course.
Whether it’s through office hours, interactivity on the discussion boards, substantive feedback on assignments, or how we connect students to the myriad support services available to them at DePaul, we are well equipped to meet this new competition. But, we need to make tracks. Now. In the recent words of Stanford University president John Hennessy on the topic of online learning, “A tsunami is coming.”
References:
Auletta, Ken. “Get Rich U.” The New Yorker. April 30, 2012. p.38.
Instructional Technology Council website. http://www.itcnetwork.org