As a student, I loved quick-paced classes because the pace ensured I would never feel bored. And if the pace got too quick, I could always ask the teacher to repeat something or answer a question that I had. For me, school was filled with dialogue, with peers and with my instructors. So when our department started offering online classes, I was glad that other people taught them. I could not even conceive of how I could teach an online class. But a few years back, one of my colleagues asked the calculus instructors to get certified in and use Etudes as our course management system in support of a grant she was running. The Etudes certification class was an online class. And by the time I finished it, I began to see how a person could develop an online community. So when my dean was looking for someone to teach an online calculus class, I did it. I spent many, many summer hours putting that class together. It was my best work and it was really far from perfect. There was a lot for me to learn there.
Teaching online DEFINITELY made my face-to-face classes better. I didn’t anticipate that. One quarter, I had a higher success rate in my online class. I didn’t anticipate that. I asked my online students why they chose online. “I have small children at home;” “It saves me driving to campus some days.” I had anticipated those reasons. What I didn’t anticipate included: “All the other sections were full;” “It’s the only way I can fit it into my class schedule;” “I like online classes.”
“I like online classes.”
“Hmm,” I’d respond. “What do you like about them?” In general, students responded that they liked the freedom of schedule. They could go at their own pace. They could work when they wanted to. When they needed more info, they could access videos. I heard them, but I never really understood until I enrolled this year in online classes myself. The single greatest part of online learning for me is that I’m always working at my edge. If something is easy, it gets done SUPER QUICKLY (no wasted time). If something is harder, I can take all the time I need, without worrying about continuing to listen to the teacher and getting “lost.”
I didn’t anticipate liking online learning. But I like it a lot!
JSinclair 
Thanks for this positive spin on online classes. Online classes sometimes get a dumped on because of their success rates. It’s important for us to remember that for motivated, self moderating learners, they might be ideal, and for some students the flexibility is what allows them to be students.
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I’m going to teach my first fully online class this summer (I know, bad idea. People tell me I should start with a quarter and then figure out how to shrink it down for a 6 week class). Oh well… it’s happening. I’m excited, if not a little nervous. But I’m going into it knowing it will be a positive experience for my students. For years, I’ve been integrating more and more online features to all of my classes, and one thing I’m looking forward to is the “permanence” of what happens in a fully online class. When teaching face-to-face, the conversation is so ephemeral I find I’m regularly forgetting things I’ve said or students have said. I often ask, “Wait, did I already talk to you about this?” which happens most frequently when I’m teaching multiple sections of the same class. With my online section this summer, I’ll be interested in seeing how it affects student work when they can always go back and see the discussions, and the lectures, and the feedback from any point of the class.
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I, too, felt like I realized very positive effects when I started to maintain an online community for my face-to-face students. By getting syllabus and calendar and reminders set up there, I found that I was much more consistent with support materials like reviews and exam prep recommendations. It felt like a lot of students benefited from that.
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I am interested in looking more at how teaching online made your face-to-face classes better. I too get better success rates in my online classes but I attributed that to university students all over the country about to finish up their bachelors and needing this last requirement. And I am not saying that university students are at a higher caliber than community college students but they are in their latter part of their college career which means they have learned a lot about how to be a student.
I do agree with you that my online teaching techniques bleed into my face-to-face classes. It is not easy to create an online community and a safe space for learning mathematics online and because I have worked so hard at it, my face-to-face classes benefit by getting better materials that are more engaging, or they get online materials shared with them in an organized and easy to use.
In the book I am reading, called Engaging the Online Learner, by Conrad and Donaldson, there is a checklist for an effective icebreakers. It should be welcoming, not about math and entice other students to want to inquire about the responses that are posted. It is a bonus if it requires some creativity or emotional intelligence. Considering these elements, I have made better icebreakers and required my students to comment on at least 2 or 3 of them. I have them do it online that way some can escape the social anxiety and respond in a more authentic way before the class starts. Then, with that warm up out of the way, a day-one icebreaker in person works nicely.
Conrad, R., Donaldson, J. A. (2011) Engaging the Online Learner. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
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I think it made my face-to-face courses more accessible to students because it created a new modality for students. Many little things that I had previously covered in lecture were now documented in writing, available to everyone. I had to think through how a student who wasn’t attending lectures would make sense of the materials and keep track of what they had to do next. I created a comprehensive “Task List,” that mapped out all of the assignments, learning objectives, helpful hints, etc., in chronological order. For my face-to-face students, I formatted it so that there was one page for each day that class met, which would serve as the cover page for the homework that I asked them to submit daily for “credit.” I made copies of the entire quarter’s task list and gave those to students on Day 1. So they always knew what they needed to work on next. Previously, I had given students a calendar and a homework assignment sheet. But the re-organization into a Task List seemed to have a big positive impact. It appeared to be more useful to them and it led to a shift in how I used my class time.
I started every class with a group quiz that consisted of what I considered the most important take-aways and sticking points of the section. That was an incredibly productive time; they were highly motivated and appreciated the opportunity to learn from each other. While they worked, I recorded who turned in the homework and got it back to them…and answered many great questions that they now knew they wanted to ask. The idea was that to manage their workload, they’d need to do all they could before class. Then, in class, they would work together to learn and understand more. And to manage their learning, they’d want to continue after class and not have to wait to get their homework back.
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