Thursday, 16 February 2006 - 12:20 PM EST

I recently had an amazing experience that I want to share. I teach three 102's MWF, face-to-face. Between classes, I was trying to catch up with my online class (as always). One of my students noticed me and asked what I was doing. When I told him, another student said "I don't understand how online classes WORK." When I finished the task at hand, I said to her, "Would you like to see what an online class looks like? Come up here, and I'll show you." Although I expected this one young woman to come and look, the ENTIRE CLASS gathered around my computer as I walked them through the "student view" of my English 250.
They were intrigued, and they had a TON of questions.

I'm thinking that we might get more students taking online classes (and fewer who think it's easy or at-your-own-pace) if online instructors give these kinds of demonstrations. My 5-minute tour seemed to have demystified the process, and several of them told me they'd think about it now.