Socratic Monologue
cc licensed flickr photo shared by GreyArea
I’ve been answering some emails and marking some assignments for my online Computer Science classes this morning, and I’ve noticed that I tend to insert smileys in my emails to students and the corrected assignments I return to them. One of the things I miss in my online classes are the moments that have nothing to do with the course, but are vital in establishing a positive relationship with a student. We come to understand each other not as a teacher and student, but as two human beings.
I don’t get those moments in online courses. My contact with students is usually via email, and only when they are having difficulties understanding a concept or wondering what a question means. It is a relatively formal relationship.
Smileys are the moments that break us out of the formal context of the course for just a moment. They are the equivalent of the smile when someone walks in the door or says something really funny. We need to encode our body language and tone into text. It’s interesting that something as seemingly trivial as a smiley is enough to introduce that personal element into our online relationship.
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I’ve been teaching high school full time online for 6 years, part time for years before that, and I return 300 to 500 files of assignments to students each week. I love smileys, but I also use spring flowers, pretty winter snowflakes, a variety of hearts at Valentine’s Day, Christmas trees, and a large array of cool checkmarks to decorate what I send back to them. It’s all nice, but what has revolutionized the online feedback process for me is VoiceThread. In VoiceThread, we discuss the assignment. I make suggestions, the student comes back and tells me why he did it his way, or maybe he makes changes and we talk about it again. It’s asynchronous, but we connect in ways we can’t on paper.
Cool. Voice is an even richer way of connecting than the smileys. I had never thought of using voicethread as a feedback/assessment tool for online learners. Thanks for sharing that idea – I will definitely be using that and showing other teachers.
You say your thoughts are good but you could use exposure to a different take on things, online courses is important .,