The University of Saint Francis (my employer) is rolling out an online MBA in the Fall. Online Masters of Business Administration | Keith Busse School of Business & Entrepreneurial Leadership | University of Saint Francis, Fort Wayne, Indiana My dean has approached me to serve as an "online ombudsman" for incoming students, to help students get started in the program, using Blackboard, etc. Basically, I'll be a "troubleshooter." (BTW - I will receive extra compensation for this :wave Looking back to when you started a DL program, I'd like to know of good practices your school did to help you succeed, as well as the things that just drove you nuts as you started. Thanks! Shawn
One thing that has always driven me nuts is poor or cryptic assignment instructions. It appears that many designers use the instructions that professors have used for in-person classes and merely transfer them to the online format. This is often not sufficient because cryptic instructions that work in-person are not sufficient when there is no verbal explanation to accompany the assignment. Designers need to take extra care to make sure instructions are extremely clear because there is no opportunity for the professor to introduce the assignment and explain it in-person. My suggestions: 1. Take a fresh approach to all assignment instructions. 2. Provide an example of a properly completed assignment. 3. Provide a grading rubric with each assignment.
My MBA experience was a wonderful one, because the staff and faculty behave as if they care about my success. I felt respected. Customer service is the key. The school/business department should be a moral exemplar for its students and graduates. You may one day need your graduates to be generous alumni.
Another thing that drives me nuts is when students are assigned to view a PowerPoint presentation that was designed as support for a classroom lecture, not for an online class. Students must read the bullet points and try to guess what the lecture covered. If a PowerPoint is to be included in the course-ware, the instructor should go to the trouble of recording some of the lecture that it was meant to accompany and then add the audio to the slide-show. PowerPoint can easily include audio with each slide and there is little excuse for asking students to view a silent presentation unless the presentation was designed specifically to be viewed online with no audio.
SurfDoctor, are you referring to NCU assignments? I have had the same problem/opportunity with NCU assignments. The description is so short and vague that I am free to go almost anywhere with the research paper in response. I am working on some e-commerce courses and I keep telling my coworkers about an upcoming assignment and how I am going to take advantage of the research opportunity to learn something useful and relevant to our projects at work. For example, we are building a mobile application to support Android and iPhone. So I spent some time researching cross platform mobile development toolkits for an e-commerce paper or two. I have also written about multi-factor authentication, which we have recently implemented at work, in some papers on e-commerce trust models. So its good if the student has a vivid imagination and wants some freedom to roam, but if the student seeks structure and wants to color within the lines, these short assignment descriptions can be troublesome.
1. Live classes every week (need not be mandatory for students but will get additional points if they need). 2. Timed or take-home exams. 3. Strict usage of Turnitin for all assignments. just my 2 cents.
Here are some quick things off the top of my head. Things that worked well: power points with audio to explain the points on the slide optional conference calls or other synchronous deliveries clear assignments clear expectations Things that have not worked well: team assignments too much flexibility in the due dates just a PowerPoint presentation not holding faculty accountable to response times
This is true, but a more specific assignment description doesn't necessarily mean that you have to provide all the structure. The problem that I have with vague assignments is from another angle. Assignments with creative freedom are great. Assignments that lack clear instructions but have very specific expectations are another matter.