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The design of online classes has evolved dramatically in the past five years.
Photo: University of Toronto/Johnny Guatto |
But Death 101
is no horror show. It is an online course, now archived, on global
health risks, death and disease, and their effect on policy, developed
by the University of Toronto for EdX Inc. And that makes the course even
less typical.
EdX is a third-party
platform on the web (another popular service is Coursera Inc.) that is
in the business of hosting MOOCs, or massive open online courses.
Sometimes the courses have a prerequisite, such as prior knowledge of
the topic. Sometimes they are part of professional certification
programs.
MOOCs
have become another option, along with the plethora of online courses
already offered directly by postsecondary institutions, for busy adults
looking to dip into online learning, whether for work or pleasure.
And
as a result, this has led to rapid changes in adult learning. The
design of online classes has evolved dramatically in the past five
years. And what is required of students online has also changed
dramatically.
Prospective students who choose to study online have a few key issues to consider.
Expect to be busy
Simply
signing up, doing some reading and dabbling in a class anonymously are
not enough. That is no more effective than sitting in a lecture and
watching a professor speak for one, two or three hours, says Gregor
Kiczales, executive director of the University of British Columbia's
extended learning department and a professor of computer science.
Online
courses are about concision. Each lecture tends to be short, about 10
minutes, accompanied by exercises sprinkled throughout the course. They
aren't about daydreaming through long classes and weeks of plowing
independently through vast texts.
"What's
interesting is that the online courses, in a funny way, have a real
advantage, because it's so easy for them to intermix presenting content
with activity. It's so easy for them to say to the learner, 'Hey, you
haven't solved a problem in a day. Why don't you do this now?' " Dr.
Kiczales says. "It's so easy for them to encourage the kind of
activities that we know promote learning."
Shop around for the right class
This
isn't as obvious as it may sound. There are many different ways in
which online classes are designed to engage students, from continual
assignments to little nudges by an algorithm or directly from an
instructor. Consider your preferences.
"Look
for signs that the online course is well designed for learning, not
that it's well designed to be efficient for the institution providing
it. Does it have a clear sense of what's going to happen each week? Does
it have real activities that are going to be interesting to engage in?
Does it check back in with you to see how you're doing, and keep you up
to date? When you post questions online, do they get answered quickly?
All of those are quality indications," Dr. Kiczales says.
Source: The Globe and Mail
