Fintelo : Online Solution

Source: www.istockanalyst.com

By: Shay Maunz

When scrolling through their feed on the social networking site Twitter, hundreds of individuals see not only updates on their friends’ whereabouts or breaking news from national media outlets, they receive updates about recent happenings at West Virginia University.

WVU News, an outlet of News and Information Services at the University, joined Twitter last year and has since posted more than 500 updates to keep their followers informed about university affairs.

“The communication landscape is changing very rapidly and radically, and we are very committed to figuring out the best ways to communicate with and connect with people we care about,” said Dan Kim, director of News and Information Services (NIS) at WVU.

WVU posts updates on Twitter when new information is made available on its Web page, and also has been looking into ways to use the medium more interactively.

NIS worked with the College of Business and Economics, for example, to coordinate a venture that got the college’s dean tweeting from a conference in Las Vegas recently.

“I know he [was] tweeting all these really interesting facts he learned,” Kim said. “It’s a great way to communicate with a much larger group.”

The university also has a Facebook page, with more than 33,000 fans. Fairmont State and Marshall universities, as well, have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts.

As technology grows more and more advanced, the trend among colleges and universities, both state and nationwide, is to hop on board, implementing new technology in the classroom as well as in administrative processes.

WVU, for one, offered more than 400 online classes during the summer session, and enrollment was up for those classes by 22 percent.

Sue Day-Perroots, the dean of extended learning at WVU, said because this generation of college students have grown up in a technology-laden society, online classes are “a pretty natural learning environment.”

And they provide a degree of flexibility that is nearly impossible with traditional courses.

“The obvious interest in online is convenience,” Day-Perroots said. “People’s schedules are just so booked. The online class gives you the time to focus on your education at a time that is feasible for you.”

Because online classes afford students more flexibility with their coursework, the classes require commitment and self-discipline. Day-Perroots warns that they are not for procrastinators.

“In the early days of online there was a perception that online classes were easier, but I think we have done away with that myth,” she said.

“Going to class used to be the challenge. Now, it’s the same way for online learning.”

But Neal Shambaugh, an associate professor at WVU and program coordinator of instructional design and technology who has also authored two textbooks on instructional design, warns that the task of keeping students engaged also falls largely on the shoulders of instructors and administrators.

“Instructors have to work to pay attention to students in different ways than before. Teaching becomes more complicated and faculty members have to spend more time preparing their courses,” he said in an e-mail. “Academic programs have to spend more time marketing for students they’ll never see, and to pay attention to their progress, although they may never step foot on campus.”

Though acknowledging that online classes deprive students of the social environment provided by a traditional classroom, Shambaugh added that as technology evolves, it could provide “unique environments you could not use in a physical classroom, such as virtual simulations, gaming, networking and world-wide communications.”

Technology is also being developed to help ward off cheating, which is often cited as a concern with online classes and assignments. Administrators have already implemented some measures — imposing time limits and randomizing questions for online coursework, among other strategies — and Day-Perroots said she expects new technology to emerge that will help in these efforts.

Administrators are also looking into ways to allow for more personal contact between students and instructors. Day-Perroots noted that administrators learned early on that students respond to an online class better if they are able to see a photograph of their instructor.

“You don’t really need to know that information, but it makes a big difference in terms of how you enjoy your class,” she said. “It’s important to remember we are all humans. Because we are humans, we do favor and enjoy human interaction.”

And Shaumbaugh notes that learning with technology is not one-size-fits-all. He urges instructors to examine the course’s goals to see where technology is appropriate.

This measure, he says, is just one more way technology has benefitted higher education — by forcing instructors to reevaluate their courses and interact with their students to determine the most effective way to teach.

“Overall, the big plus to technology to my way of thinking is that it forces a college professor to re-think the learning outcomes, the learning activities, and the assessment…” he said. “Just because the technology exists doesn’t mean that a course needs to use it. Communication with students will be even more important than before.”