Starting this semester, Syracuse University professors will be back in class to learn the rules of teaching online courses.

IST 700: ‘Tools and Techniques for Teaching Online’ is an online course in the School of Information Studies that helps instructors understand the Internet classroom by allowing them to experience it as students, iSchool professor Scott Nicholson said.

The course, in which 18 SU faculty members from various schools are enrolled, is a two-credit graduate-level course taught by Nicholson and fellow iSchool professor Peggy Brown. The course is taught online and open to all SU faculty. There are no office hours, and the class meets in person only once.

Amid the economic recession, online courses at universities are more popular than ever, according to a 2009 study by the Sloan Consortium, an organization that specializes in integrating online courses into college education.

SU faculty enrolled in the course will meet Sept. 17 for a class orientation, Nicholson said. Professors enrolled in the fall are graded on creating the online curriculum they are to teach in the spring semester, he said.

Since many professors have never studied online, the training course is an opportunity for faculty to understand and empathize with their students’ online experiences, Nicholson said. The IST 700 curriculum is derived from workshops that were conducted on YouTube and run by the iSchool.

From the experience, iSchool professors and administrators ‘realized that there needed to be a more systematic approach to preparing people to teach online,’ Nicholson said.

Part of creating an online course also includes building alternate ways to communicate, such as by phone or e-mail, to overcome technological issues, he said.

At undisclosed times throughout the course, Nicholson and Brown will simulate partial system failures, such as a blocked course plan, and force instructors to work around them.

Nicholson said there was also the posibility for problems because the course is taught online. As with anything that relies on a system, he said, the occasional glitch is guaranteed. Internet connections can falter, and even submitting an assignment can be impossible at times, Nicholson said.

‘That’s going to put students in a mode of panic,’ Nicholson said.

geclarke@syr.edu

 

Published on September 7, 2010 at 12:00 pm