Community Update

The iTeach Program

By Scott Benjamin

After teaching online courses since
2000 at Western Connecticut State University (WCSU), I experienced being an
online student last summer, devoting up to 16 hours a week on the nine,
one-week modules in iteach Essentials, which was offered to instructors at the
17 schools under the state Board of Regents for Higher Education.

 “We wanted to design an opportunity to
experience online learning from the perspective of the students,” said Tobi
Krutt, a master teacher who helped design iteach.

“We heard from a lot of faculty that
had been teaching online for some time that they never had been an online
student,” said Krutt, who is the manager of Technical Tools and Training for
the Connecticut State Colleges And Universities.

“One of the most common comments from
faculty is that they have more compassion for their students after taking the
iTeach course,” she added.

“We designed it to be challenging,”
Krutt explained in a phone interview. “At the community colleges, for example,
a vast majority of the students have jobs. They’re stressed.”

Through the instruction of Adrianne
Kelly, the director of Distance Learning at Tunxis Community College in
Farmington, and Kathleen Murphy, a Business professor at Gateway Community
College in New Haven, I have utilized several pieces of iteach content in both
my online and on-ground classes.

For example, I have added midweek
200-word Discussion board posts instead of having both the long and the additional
50-word reply post both be due at the end of the cycle; animation Web sites; a
student contract agreement and instructor contract; the 1,000-point grading
scale; and using bullet points and numbering regularly in the instructions for
assignments.

Additionally, after using discussion
group projects since I began teaching on-ground classes at WCSU in Spring 1998
I finally had enough confidence to use a similar project online, which was
successful.

The iteach class also had a
reflective journal in each of the modules, which has prompted me to develop a
similar essay for my Spring 2014 on-ground class.

“The reflective journals can turn on
a faucet of ideas,” Krutt said. “It provides insight, because in some instances
the teachers taking iteach as well as students in regular online classes will
even tell you their deepest, darkest fears.”

“The prompts for the reflective
journals have to be specific if they are to be effective,” Krutt said. “People
might go off on tangents or not fully comment on the topic if it is a general
prompt.”

For example, in the concluding
1,600-word reflective journal in iteach last summer, the first prompt asked: “Describe
your impressions of online teaching before you took iTeach Essentials, and compare/contrast that to your current ideas
about online teaching.”

The program also included weekly
threaded Discussion boards, which I have used for years in both online and
conventional classes.

“The Discussion boards are the heart
and soul of the class,” Krutt said. “In an online setting it usually takes
about three weeks to build a community of trust and for friendships to develop
outside of class.”

Kevin Corcoran, the executive
director of the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium, said that he found as
a student that “there are tighter bonds in the online community” as he
reflected on an accelerated online graduate program that he took in comparison
to an earlier face-to-face program on a commuter campus.

“You may lose some of the spontaneity
of the classroom, but there is a more thorough discussion through the class
when you’re online,” he added

However, Krutt said the Discussion
boards can increase a teacher’s workload.

“Some teachers are concerned that
they will be overwhelmed with the communication on the Discussion board,” Krutt
said. “We tell them to summarize a series of posts that were similar and that
they don’t have to comment on each one.”

Online learning has been offered at
the four-year Connecticut state universities for more than 15 years, yet it is
still a tiny part of the curriculum.

That may change, since CTMirror.org
reported that during his talk at WCSU last November, Board of Regents President
Gregory Gray said “the system’s future” will be in online education and he is
considering requiring each student to take six to nine credits to graduate.

He said that the “greatest
transformation” in the 17-school system will be at the online Charter Oak State
College, which currently has just 1,600 students.

Krutt said the iteach program was
first offered by the state community colleges in the Fall 2007 and the demand
was so great that the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium took it over in
the Spring 2009. She said since its inception 300 teachers have earned an
iteach certificate.

In columns that I wrote for The Echo
in 2009 and 2012, some of the students I interviewed said they were able to
take classes online that their schedules wouldn’t have permitted for them to
take on-ground.

Online classes are popular.

On Nov. 2, 2012, just weeks after
registration began for Spring 2013, I had the maximum 38 students for the
online section of PS 104: World Governments, Economies and Cultures that I was
teaching at WCSU and just two for the same on-ground course, which eventually
grew to 32 students.

The 2012 Sloan-C report stated that 32
percent of higher education students take at least one class online.

Yet, relatively few college
instructors teach online.

 “It requires a multi-faceted approach,” Krutt
said. “Some faculty finish iteach and say that they wouldn’t teach online or would
only do a hybrid course.”

She said there are several factors that
deter college instructors from teaching online.

One of them is
the need to build basic technology competencies.

 “In our
system, many of our faculty still lack a basic level of competency with
computers and/or with the Internet (such as working with different web
browsers, understanding how to create and refine effective online searches,
copy and paste URLs, etc.),” she noted in a written statement. “Often, this
makes it challenging for instructors to develop the skills necessary to use the
various tools required to develop a robust online course.”

One of the most common things we read in the
final reflective papers of iTeach
participants is that they now have the confidence to teach online,” Krutt
added. “Many of these instructors already
possessed the technical skills to build and manage an online course—but they
lacked the confidence to try until after taking the course. They must also
believe that effort required will be within manageable limits.”

She
also said some instructors also are reluctant to teach online because of peer
criticism.

“Faculty
take their cues from the perspectives of their colleagues; a faculty member who
has an interest in teaching online is less likely to follow up on it if their
peers express negative views on the topic,” Krutt wrote.

“It is going to require some
marketing to get more faculty to teach online,” Corcoran said. “Teaching online
is just a different delivery vehicle in which you can still have your presence
and personalize the course.”

“The studies show that the grades
that students achieve and the completion rates are comparable with face-to-face,”
he added.

Krutt said a 10-minute Google search
for online studies will result in roughly the same number that will claim that
online learning is superior, equal or inferior to on-ground instruction.

 “It depends on who is doing the study,” she
said.

However, Krutt said it was striking
that the 2012 Sloan C report indicated that 77 percent of academic leaders rate
the learning outcomes in online education as the same or superior to those in
face to face.

She said she hopes the Board of
Regents will develop an online task force to study how that instruction could
benefit the system.

CTMirror.org has reported that Gray
believes that it could lower costs since students from multiple campuses in the
system could take the same online class.

“We’re very excited that he is making
online learning front and center in his goals,” Krutt said.