Challenges of Online Teaching

While I have not actually taught a class online (or offline for that matter) yet, I have facilitated many online parent information sessions and new student orientation sessions using the Elluminate web conference tool. Some of the challenges I have encountered include:

1. Preparation: I have found that that more you can prepare and practice ahead of time, the easier it is to facilitate an online presentation. It is also very important to practice using the online tools so you are comfortable and don't have long delays in moving between presentation elements.
2. Technology: Whenever you are using technology tools, things rarely go off without a hitch. You have to be prepared for the unexpected and have a back-up plan in case things don't work the way you envisioned. This goes for the participants as well. I have found it useful when dealing with people who may be unfamiliar with the program to have an extra person available to help participants with technical support questions while another starts the presentation. You can then utilize a break out room to get the inevitable late-comers up to speed without inconveniencing those who arrived on time and prepared.
3. Multi-tasking: I find it a real challenge to keep up with everything that is going on during a synchronous online presentation. It is difficult to focus on what you are trying to communicate while simultaneously watching the chat area for questions/comments, keeping track of participants who are entering/leaving the room and making sure the presentation/discussion stays on time and on task.

I suspect those will be the same obstacles I will encounter when I get my turn to teach my segment in this class. I think it will be important to remain focused on the learning objectives of the lesson to ensure that at the end of the session, the participants achieved the intended results.

I chose my topic, Cyberbullying, after attending a town hall meeting on the subject in Chicago. I did some more research and found out that the problem is much more pervasive than I previously thought. Anyone who works with young people in an online educational environment is likely to encounter students who have been victims of cyberbullies or have bullied others and I think it is important that educators understand the problem and know how to help students in that situation. 

http://www.rcampus.com/indexrubric.cfm

I must admit that I was skeptical about rubrics when I started this program. Not having a teaching background, I considered them to be a pretentious product of educratic idealogues and a nuisance for busy teachers (or busy grad students). That was before I started creating my own and came to a fuller appreciation of their value both for the teacher and the student. I modeled my rubric for the asynchronous discussion on the one used for participants in this class. For the synchronous discussion, I created one from scratch using a free online tool at iRubric. I found it to be very easy to use and intuitive for novice rubric creators like myself.