Keep up the good work

I am so happy that you have created this blog, and I believe after some time, people will begin to use it to air their views--will require some constant reminding on your part to do that as the faculty is basically quite conservative when it comes to making public statements in a blog--still a new avenue of communication for most. All of my courses will blog in the fall, as I have decided to experiment with this free and quite easy assessible blogging. I like that studnets/classes can now restrict who indeed gets to view--so all of the students in one class will access only to their blog--I am a still experimenting with the how of that, as well as with which blog to use..

As to a previous posting about last Friday's assessment online workshop---I posted a comment that stated, irrespective of how you teach--meaning delivery, "best practices apply"--the degree by which you use these best practices IS impacted by the delivery---so much has changed in the past 2-3 years as to how you can interact online--effectively eliminating much of the criticism directed to the online effort in the past, as opposed to the traditional. It's all about how much and what you wish to use as tools for teaching--and how much contact you desire--same is true in the traditional class---given that I teach mostly lit and writing classes, I have far far more contact with my students in the online courses, and we now video conference as well, so the 24/7(within reason) capabilities of online vastly expands the reach of any course----same is true of my non distances courses as most work is posted on the Internet for review by me and students withing a time span--far expanding the ability to share from that of just classtime in a fixed location in the past. What needs a good examination is if there is indeed any shift in the work habits of students. I have come to see that irrespective of teaching modality, the working behavior of a group of students in terms of deadlines, getting the work done etc, is pretty much the same. That was not the case in the past, as many thought the online would be easier, less work etc, and sadly discovered it was the oppositve. Also had a bit more procastination in online before, but that has also come more into line with a traditional class. Students are students, and once a teaching modality becomes standard--and online is becoming quite standard---I have seen much more similar behavior with students in either modality.

The points made by the workshop speakers apply just as well to any other type of teaching--what is causing some problems is that many who teach online/distance have not yet learned how to use online the plethora of tools available to duplicate the best practices of an excellent traditional classroom environment