By Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D.
If you're an eLearner in a typical online course in the United States, chances are you’re used to having 20 to 25 students in your course section and you are accustomed to receiving personalized responses from your instructor for each of your papers, drafts, discussion board posts, and emails. In a perfect world, this model replicates the experience of being in a small seminar which results in high-quality interactions, multi-pronged student engagement, and personal mentoring and guidance.
Unfortunately, the small section model is expensive. Colleges and universities are finding that, to their dismay, the initial investment made in infrastructure and computing capacity software/servers was just the beginning. Differentials in upgrades led to a domino effect of obsolescence.
Expensive eLearner program costs matter because the high costs are passed on to you, the student.
Why the current model is not always sustainable?
The hidden costs of small section online courses include:
1. Extreme bandwidth and capacity needs;
2. Large numbers of individual sections resulting in high administrative overhead;
3. Frequent software or operating system upgrades or changes, which precipitate incompatibilities and the need for time-consuming patches;
4. High attrition rate of burned out adjunct instructors, resulting in high turnover, and thus necessitating the team to develop orientation modules and training courses.
5. Coordination of the large number of adjuncts is no easy feat. It is expensive and time-consuming.
6. Updating multiple small sections is complicated, time-consuming, tedious, and ongoing hands-on work.
7. Grading and record-keeping with numerous small sections turns into a Herculean task.
Are there any solutions to the issues?
How can costs be reduced, while engagement, retention, and high-quality outcomes maintained?
Solutions:
1. Bandwidth problems: make the materials available in many forms. This could even include material accessible via mobile device, or CD-ROM.
2. Think of ways to maximize the number of students per section without diminishing quality. This can be accomplished by having "lecture" sections, break-out discussion groups, and uniformly administered quizzes.
3. Keep the learning management program as simple as possible. It may be necessary to have faculty enter final grades directly into the student records software (Oracle, Datatel, Banner, etc.). Entering grades this way is tedious, but it is much better than having to reconfigure the entire architecture.
4. Give adjuncts flexibility with the course shells, and give them support. Make the lessons fun and engaging. Do not kill the professor and the students with what seems to be busy work.
5. Make the updating as painless as possible. Whenever possible, let the professor do as much updating of tests, deadlines, etc. within the course itself.
6. Find a way to streamline grading, record-keeping, and archiving.
There are many ways to evaluate and improve online courses to make them more efficient and to reduce costs. Perhaps the most important aspect of the process is the way learning takes place. A positive, nurturing eLearning environment will often result when processes are streamlined and morale is high.
Download and listen to the podcast:
http://community.elearners.com/blogs/inside_elearning/attachment/4546.ashx (4.47 MB)