New Technology in the Old School

I've started my career teaching online awhile back when 56K dial-up connectivity is the king of super information highway (now called Internet). It began in the technical support team making sure that the latency in audio is good enough that the student can hear the moderator. I remember being fascinated chatting with clients from Asia. Being an Atlanta based company, this was huge. Think about it, real-time conversation with someone in China; incredibly amazing! I was filled with excitement and torture at the same time since our audio feed was always insufficient for the client to make sense of the lecture being delivered. So, during those times the core issue was connectivity. Every data (course content i.e. PowerPoint, Word, Jpegs) had to be stripped down so it can easily populate the page. The bigger issue was the lag time or latency of the audio. It was choppy enough that it cannot be understood. So, as a contingency we provided clients with a phone number to call. Content such as homework and tutorials was stored in each of the student's web space and can asynchronously access. Each class had an element of face to face interaction and some type of live interaction. If you take the old brick and mortar platform of lecture and discussion, this form is what we had expected in any classroom setting. This was not that long ago.   So, what's changed? Old school Instructors, teachers, and or facilitators forgot their lesson plan? Or, are new breed of educators relying more on just creating the content and pushing them down to learners (build it and they will have to do them). I see more and more virtual learning system transform into this library type systems where most content (course elements) are all asynchronously manufactured. This is good because it defines what online learning is about, flexibility. Learners and users can take their time, whenever that maybe and go to class. It works for some (as mentioned in my other articles) but, does it constitute better learning? Where's the element of good interactivity - the human sense of the class? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for flexibility. I, like the rest of the online learning community likes the fact that I'm not relegated to time and location when I'm learning online. So, if this is the case for learners, why am I talking about replicating old school practices of learning like "real-time" answers to student concerns in a classroom online? (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});   Well, like the results that you get from a live "offline" discussions, you'll get a good assessment of the student's knowledge about the subject matter when you're engage in a collaborative conversation. Furthermore, this enhances the Instructor's ability to modify the contents of the course because it'll be apparent in the discussions what area needs more elaboration or explanation. This make the learning experience more exciting because it replicates an old school type of platform in an online setting. With this platform, we can begin to connect better with our peers since the discussion is a lot more organic in structure. As a supplement to the standard post and reply method, live discussions can bring about excitement, fear, anxiety, and really all emotions common to a physical classroom discussion. In doing so, we eliminate the external commentaries such as noise of disagreement or rude unsolicited comments. However, it also bundles other factors like audio clapping for agreement and laughter for the smart comedic responses.   What do we do to meet in the middle? How can we get some type of immediate interaction with the flexibility of asynchronous platform? In other words, extract the beauty of both worlds. Well, not all of the juice but majority of it. After all, this is about online learning. Well, we can create simulations with complete web 2.0 interactivity. Designers and developers can create a lecture fully integrated with artificial intelligence response system to derive the best fit answer to a student question related to the subject. Think about it; say a Business Instructor needs to lecture the differences of management style. Then a student asks a question related to what style he possesses in his work? The developer can create a database of questions in trying to understand more of the student's behavior and compare them to the already existing answers built relating to the particular behavior stated. So, it's not live. It's nor synchronous. It's not even exciting. But, it will provide quick response to get a real-time interaction and still possesses the major component of flexibility.