What effort do you expect from your teachers?

I recently took some On-line courses. The teachers didn't seem very helpful.

First, they didn't make themselves available to help students with papers before they were due.

Then, after students turned them in, the teachers just give a grade or some very terse comment, with little explanation or suggestions.

Also, there wasn't any teacher-made learning material. The content all came from the textbook publisher, which they put On-line as public information.

Is it okay for me to expect more from my teachers than this?

 

You can certainly expect more from teachers and you should. The thing you are missing out on is that you do not HAVE a teacher. You have a facilitator. It's not like you are butt in seat listening to his great lecture. Here's the book, read it, tell me what you think. The facilitator tells you if you are correct or whatever and possibly makes some grammatical, form, and reference corrections and you are on your way.

Want more interaction from on high? Gotta go to a B&M school my friend.

Plus most B&M prof's give grades and terse comments, and utilize the learning materials that came with the book and are not very original. Anyway, maybe your next course will be more fulfilling.

Good luck.

 

I think it is. I have had a mix of instructors in my online courses. Some of them were very involved providing great feedback and some even had weekly chat times that we could attend to ask questions etc. Then I have had some who have done the bare minimum and I didn't hear from them unless is was in response to a paper I turned in and even then the comments were brief. I remember one instructor I had just gave grades and every single time I would have to email him to get feedback as to why he took off points....

I don't think it is asking much to expect a little more interaction from your instructor. When you say they didn't make themselves available by that you mean what? All but 2 of my teachers the only help you got was when you asked for it. If you didn't ask you didn't get any help and I am pretty sure this is the way it is with most online courses. The lack of teacher made material doesn't surprise me as well since most teachers now a days teach courses that are already designed and laid out for them.

I say if you want more interaction you will have to be the one who makes that happen as for the most part instructors provide feedback on papers, comment (if your lucky) on your discussion and well that is about it.

 

That means, after I pay tuition, they tell me to pay more money to gain access to some Web site from the publisher which has all of the material. Seems my tuition money is just thrown away.

 

You can expect whatever you want to expect.

The reality is that you're not paying for instruction. You're paying to be formally graded on your learning and performance and later, paying for the degree conferral.

Many schools will allow you to audit a course for free and of course it's possible to just walk on to any campus you want and sit in a large lecture hall soaking in the knowledge for free. The only control is grading and transcript. That's what you're paying for.

I find it best to consider myself a product of any system I enroll into and not a customer. It prevents me from being underwhelmed by my facilitators and allows me to appreciate when I find someone genuinely interested.

Funny thing is that this thought process was suggested to me by a professor at Northeastern and later reinforced by a relative with tenure at the University of Kentucky, both reasonable brick and mortars.

I think that the customer perspective via online schools is more rampant in part because of just how easy it is to enroll (fast food admissions) and in part because most of the instructors I've had are so overwhelmed by the student/faculty ratio it's hard not to imagine them in paper hats shucking fries and blindly passing students.

So if you're not paying for instruction there's nothing to be upset about. Carry on.

 

The overall thrust of your post is how I view school as well. It's a way for me to validate that I have learned something, and I get a piece of paper to present to others to show I have some knowledge/skills. Thus, why my view of college is as a way to prepare oneself for future employment. Nothing more.

And, this is especially true in online for profit schools you're there to show that you are learning the material and to pay someone to acknowledge said learning with a "mark". This "mark" is proof of your intellect and of your hireability.

Good points on the customer service issue as well. Of course we all have remarked, regarding online schools, about how good or bad a schools customer service is. And in keeping with your point...its a pretty useless rubric to judge a school by as well.

Go and get good grades, if you want a friend go to a bar :sgrin:

 

But I am paying for instruction!

Check the definition of "tuition".

1. A fee for instruction, especially at a formal institution of learning.
2. Instruction; teaching.

If they aren't going to offer instruction, they shouldn't charge tuition, but rather, charge for administrative fees. Schools with self-study programs, such as the UoL, don't provide instruction and also don't charge tuition.

 

I'd strongly suggest that you seek a tutor then, or go to a brick and mortar with a really low student to faculty ratio.

If you can find solace in semantics, be my guest. My personal experiences show some difference between the dictionary definition and the practical one. I'd also argue that what you get in a classroom at the collegiate level isn't really instruction, but lecturing.

In the best schools you're expected to read all the material in the texts before showing up to class and you're lectured additional supplemental material that may or may not be related to the week's readings or covered anywhere else in the books. You're expected to take notes and be responsible for that material. This is as close as you get to instruction.

Simply put, this is not what happens in online programs and most T4 and T3 programs I've seen have instructors that regurgitate text content in lectures so kids don't have to read if they don't want to. If you're lucky the instructor takes questions during or after the lecture, but this is impossible in 100 and some 200 level lecture halls.

Anyway, I digress. All I should have really said was: "If what you're paying for isn't what you're getting, then you need to go somewhere where your definition of what you're paying for lines up with the product your school is providing." Fortunately, as time goes on, better and better schools are offering online programs. You just have to find them and ensure that every school you go to is better than the one you just left.

 

You should have seen how bad most of the teachers were at USF in tampa. Most couldn't even speak the language properly in the engineering and math departments.
The liberal arts teachers really seemed to care a little more but most teachers were there for 45 minutes 3x a week and spent 15 of those minutes talking about their personal life and chatting, so you didn't get a whole lot of learning in a 3 CR class.

So for online classes, I assume zero interaction with the "teacher" and 100% interaction with the course work. I understand that for some classes you need more help and I don't know what to tell you. In a butt in seat college, you would not get that help from the teacher. It would be from the computer lab, a tutor or something like a TA. The teacher's office hours were limited and I was always working when they had office hours.

So persevere, don't become disgruntled and try your best. I would hire a tutor to help out after hours if you can afford it.