Somehow, I thought developing an online math course would be easier. Having taught college level math courses for 9 years now, I’ve begun to understand what it takes and doesn’t take for student to succeed in a college level mathematics course. Here are the things that I think will be the biggest hindrances in the online version of the college algebra course.
- Limited interaction with the instructor during the explanation process. I love being able to spur students on in their learning process. For example, I propose certain ideas that are clearly false and allow them to correct these concepts of algebraic operations as a way of helping them learn. When they go awry, I straighten their course, so to speak. Also, in explaining, I leave the floor open to any questions along the way. If I misstep or jump over a step, the students can interact with me.
In the online version of the course, the students will be watching lecture videos and filling in a lecture notebook. Interaction is lost until they email me with questions over the lecture or homework.
- Students are not forced to write out their homework in a systematic way. The homework assignments will be assigned and submitted through an online web application provided by the textbook publisher. One nice feature that is available now is that they do enter in their answer through some sort of equation editor. This at least forces them to grasp notation which is leaps and bounds better than multiple choice questions. Nevertheless, I will see very little of their handwritten work.
As part of the course, I decided to at least check this sort of work twice during the semester. They are required to take two pencil and paper, proctored exams. This gives us a check on the fact that they are the ones learning the material and not someone else. It also gives us a couple verifications that they have grasped the notation and systematic process of doing these types of problems.
- I’m worried about the ability of the students to communicate fluently with the instructor through the online medium. There are equation editors in the messaging center in Blackboard but their use is so tedious that fluent communication is difficult. It is much better than no such tool being available, but I’ll just have to wait and see how well it works for the course.
We’ll probably have a bit of a rocky start with this class the first time it is offered but who doesn’t. The disclaimer I will put on all my documents at the beginning of the semester is below
”It is a myth to think that an online version of a course is easier than a traditional class. College Algebra is the worst case of all. If you struggled in a traditional math class, you can expect to find this as challenging, if not more. Student be warned!!”
. . Too harsh or does it need even more “teeth”?
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April 27th, 2007 at 9:08 am
Perhaps you could collaborate with a software geek, and make improvements.
When in high school, i went through a matricies book, with multiple choice (turn to page 97 for A, …). If you guessed right, but really didn’t get it, it was essentially impossible to back up and try again. And, in the end, you had no reference text. An on-line version could fix these issues and more, but you have to know the problems to fix them.
An on-line program can provide lots of problems to try. Lots more than dead trees. For example, Add/sub
and Multiplication