Editorial: Spicing Up Online Courses

For the past seven or eight years, the University of North Carolina (UNC) system, that includes 16 higher education institutions, has hosted a system- wide Teaching and Learning with Technology conference. The conference is usually held in one of the larger cities - Raleigh, Charlotte, or Greensboro. This year (2010) the conference will be held online, hosted by one of the 16 campuses. While perusing the conference announcement, I discovered that UNC owns five islands in Second Life. First I chuckled, thinking how utterly insane it was that in the midst of a major budget crisis we have purchased property in Second Life. Then, I thought about the importance of making top quality higher education accessible to online learners, and it made perfect sense. It is not good enough to offer electronic correspondence courses; we need to spice up our online courses and classrooms. So, maybe an investment in Second Life is a very wise decision. So, how can we ensure that our online courses are interactive and engaging, not drab correspondence courses online? How can we ensure that our online students are part of an engaged learning community? Consider the following: 1. Use audio, video and graphics to add interest to the online classroom. Audio clips, video clips and even simple but relevant graphics can add dimension and interest to the online classroom and help students to better understand concepts. Streaming audio can make discussions richer and more interactive than chat rooms or asynchronous discussion boards, though asynchronous technology still have great value in adding time flexibility to online classes. Mix and match and use a fairly wide variety of tools to meet the needs of the students and the nature of the course. Applications such as Elluminate offer audio and video technology and are fairly easy to learn and use. 2. Use social networking to add diversity to your online class. Invite students who are in similar courses or programs around the country and the world to interact and share with your students. This can be done fairly easily using social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedTn, Ning, Flickr, Netlog, XING and Twitter, to name just a few. Make friends with students from Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, Central and South America, Africa, and beyond. Let globalization and cultural diversity enrich your online courses, regardless of the course content. 3. Include relevant educational games. Many excellent shells are available to help in developing relevant games to enhance learning in online courses. Games are particularly helpful for review and remediation. A variety of word games are available, including word searches for learning courserelated vocabulary, crossword puzzles for basic concepts, and Jeopardy for review or remediation of content at various learning levels including analysis and synthesis. And, a game such as Deal or No Deal might be used to introduce the concept of probability or to begin a discussion on decision making. 4. Include edutainment Edutainment is not a new concept. It includes such ordinary tools as storytelling and role playing and easily accessible technologies such as television, films, videos, and museum artifacts. …