Despite a number of similarities between teaching college courses in a classroom (called face-to-face teaching or "f2f"), one major difference will either "make you" or break you" as you transition from articulate, well-poised, charming classroom instructor to master typist, HTML-savvy online pedagogue. That one difference is how you design your classroom activities.

One of the biggest misconceptions that beginning online instructors have is that "if I can teach in the classroom, I can teach online." Having worked with faculty for over four years now in developing their skills to move online, I have discovered that this belief is simply not true. There are dynamite classroom instructors who fail miserably online, and boring, lackluster, monotone classroom instructors whose online classes ring, whizz, and shine with learning. Teaching in the classroom and online require two totally different approaches to activity and task design for accomplishing your learning objectives for the particular class.

However, before you start panicking and giving up, remember the following crucial aspects that are the same in both environments: if you really enjoy what you do, and you really enjoy working with students to help them learn and accomplish their goals, and you know that you are a good teacher already, then the transition from f2f to online is merely a matter of learning some computer skills, mastering the labyrinths of WebTycho, and most importantly, changing how you think about course design.

Here are a list of the top six myths that I normally encounter in my training classes working with beginning online faculty, followed by a short identification of the problem with thinking this way:

Problem: Students won’t scroll through 12 pages of your notes. There won’t be any interaction.

Problem: WebTycho is designed for group work, and your students will benefit tremendously from the interaction with each other. They do this on breaks, pauses, and by exchanging telephone numbers in f2f classrooms.

Problem: Everyone is answering the same questions and posting them, so it’s easy for students to look and see what others have posted and paraphrase. If you have them not post and just send answers to their assignment file, you’ll quickly go crazy trying to run 20 one-on-one online classrooms rather than 1 team effort endeavor.

Problem: Grading and promptness are completely different in the online classroom. You have to develop a system you can use and be disciplined about returning assignments since the "pressure" of seeing the students the next class isn’t there.

Problem: Researching Web sites and databases is supplementary to the course, not primary.

Problem: Students won’t interact with each other, so you might as well be running 20 individual courses. Grading has to include significant amounts for interaction and participation.

Okay, so those are the myths that are out there! So, what are we to do about them? Read on!

Ways to Become an Online Architect for Your Course

Rather than seeing yourself primarily as an instructor as you begin to design your course, think of yourself as an architecht of sorts. Which activities can you use to take advantage of the multimedia approach WebTycho offers? Remember, you have the Web, online UMUC databases, collaborative document sections for group work, and other areas to use for resources. In fact, the number of resources available is limited only by your imagination!

You have to design activities based on learning objectives that will ensure learning occurs in the online environment. What follows are several tips for activities that have worked for me in various communications and liberal arts online courses. You can easily modify these tips for other disciplines.

Rather than posting your lecture notes in full 25-page structure in the Course Content of your WebTycho classroom shell, divide the notes up into various categories with labels and post them as separate topics in a given conference. After your notes, post six or seven discussion questions that you might use in the classroom to generate discussion following your lecture. Have students pick one and answer in eight to ten sentences and then require them sometime over the week to respond in at least three to five sentences to at least three of their classmates.

Separating long documents into readable sections followed by appropriate discussion questions is a good way to ensure that students are reading your notes and then engaged in applying them.

At then end of most textbooks, there are discussion questions to answer. Use these as a base, especially if the questions are bad or poorly written for discussion. Come up with one discussion question for each student. Assign each student a specific question and have him or her post his or her answer as a separate topic within the conference (with a label the student comes up with). Then during the week, require the students to respond to the student’s response.

We all know how grueling and time-consuming preparing chapters or texts for online discussion can be. If you are running a textbook-type of class that has students read chapters or articles, a good tip is to have them work up a group presentation of the text assigned for the week. Divide the class into groups of three or four (I’ve found that teams of two work very well for online classes), and then assign each group a chapter to present. Be sure to give them a format you want to use (such as Title of Chapter, Key Vocabulary, Discussion Questions, Points to Remember, or whatever is effective for your learning objectives).

The student groups or teams are then responsible for posting their chapter presentation at the beginning of the week.

A variation of the group presentation tip is to have students do presentations individually. You decide the topic or chapter to be presented and then assign students the topics or chapters to present. Once again, be sure you give them a template or standard format of sorts to follow. Of course, you should also encourage creativity and flexibility here, but give them what you feel is needed to be included based on learning objectives.

Using online debate formats is another surefire way to jazz up a boring WebTycho class and improve interaction. Before the course starts, come up with weekly topics in your discipline and course to be debated—pro and con. Then assign students (or groups or teams of students) one side. Have another student serve as moderator (larger classes can use co-moderators). Each student rotates over the course so by the end of the course, all have debated a weekly issue and have served as moderator.

One of the first things beginning online instructors notice when they take on a WebTycho course is that it is extremely difficult to keep up with all the postings in terms of answering them, giving feedback, and responding to everyone. It is quite literally impossible. One tip I have used in my courses is to assign student moderators or co-moderators to run the conference topics for a given week. They become responsible for the interaction (I retain responsibility for participation) and flow of the discussion. At the end of the week, each moderator is then responsible for summing up the week’s discussion (using a format I have given them) and posting this summary as the final posting before the week is closed.

The types of questions you post for discussion should be open-ended and encourage discussion. It does no one any good if you ask questions that have only one answer. Reader-response types of questions such as "How do you feel about. . . " or "What was your favorite. . . " or "Why do you think. . . " or "What is the most (or least) important. . ." gets everybody going and interested to see what the other students have posted.

As you can see, the activities for the online classroom are going to be what makes your class interesting and informative, but they should also maximize learning. Students should be eager to come to "class"—to be eager to see the next week’s postings and to see what their classmates have posted. I know that if the classroom is set up to be a type of reading room of sorts, it becomes easier for students to study for tests and to play "catch up" if they have missed a week.

Whatever you decide to do, base it on your discipline and learning objectives. The first step in any kind of course design must be careful planning of learning objectives and then developing appropriate activities to meet your objectives.

So, treat these myths and tips as a brainstorming sheet of sorts to get you thinking about dynamic activities that will work for you, your class, and most importantly, your students. Making the transition to an online instructor is all up to your positive attitude, willingness to experiment, and hard work in planning and designing the course for learning.

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