Trinh is an associate professor in museum studies at a comprehensive university. She has delivered an innovative introductory online course on museumology; in fact, students enrolled at universities in New Zealand, South Africa, and Finland all take her course. The course is delivered via Vista, features a range of multimedia educational artifacts, and guest lectures delivered via live streaming. Although participating in some of these activities is challenging for students in other time zones, they understand these are required activities and full participation is a condition of enrollment.
Trinh’s committed to delivering learner-centred courses, whether taught F2F, online or blended. But this course – and its over 150 student enrollments – is challenging for her to manage. Email in particular can be onerous: on some mornings she finds dozens of messages. Some of these come to her university email address; others to her Vista email. She even gets student questions as comments to her blog!
Were this a F2F course, she would set up office hours – but that’s not an option in an online course, is it? Post your ideas in the what could Trinh do discussion forum.
Suggestions for Trinh
While Trinh appears to be trying to do many good things and provide a student-centred environment, with a class of 150 students she will always have difficulty in what Anderson refers to as facilitating discourse with her students. Others have already mentioned breaking the group into smaller cohorts and I agree that this will help, but only if Trinh has the help of TA’s or ex-students. Let’s assume that this is not possible for either a lack of experienced students or financial reasons. First, Trinh needs to make sure there is only one option for getting in touch with her via email to centralize this form of communication. While this makes it more efficient to check her email it does not cut down on the amount she is getting. This is where it will be crucial to to make sure she has chosen a very simple design with clear instructions. Furthermore, Steve mentioned earlier the idea of creating a question bank. I think this is critical or at least a FAQ section on Vista where students can look first for common questions. Along with an FAQ page, a page with visual diagrams about how to use the site might be helpful.
Moreover, as many instructors in the MET program already do, having regular updates or announcements can also cut down on the amount of questions that may be coming on the horizon for any given unit or module.
Finally, if Trinh really wants to create Anderson’s version of a community of inquiry there should be an online office hour that could take place in real time chat settings. However, rather than just setting out these times for everyone, have certain cohorts access these times and create a protocol for asking questions so it is not a free for all of 150 questions pouring it at once.