Want to fail big time? Want to announce to the world that you plan to teach online, then fall flat on your face? Here’s how.

Mistake #1: Try to start from scratch.

Want to make sure you don’t stand a change of succeeding with you’re new online course? Try to create it entirely from scratch rather than converting a course that already exists.

Surely you’ve taught before. Surely you have a course ready to roll. Convert that one! Researching and preparing original course material is labor intensive enough. If you attempt to do that while also building your first course Web site, months, many months, will likely pass before you are ready. Do yourself a favor. Convert a course you’ve already taught. Especially your first time online, don’t start from scratch.

Mistake #2: Don’t start far enough ahead.

Even if you do choose a course that already exists, beware the beginner’s tendency to underestimate how long the conversion process takes. Give yourself plenty of time to do the job right. For a course that will last 12 to 16 weeks, plan for at least that same amount of time to build the technology-enriched version. If you are developing original materials, double that. Rule of Thumb: Make your best estimate and add 25 to 50 percent on to that.

Mistake #3: Use the wrong media for the message.

Inexperienced cyber-teachers tend to type or scan reams of pages into what then becomes a huge, dense, unwieldy, deadly dull, eye-numbing course Web site. Or, they foist streaming audio or video onto learners who don’t have the bandwidth to receive it in more than fits and starts. Why bother? Why torture your students? You don’t have to deliver EVERYTHING electronically. If you want to distribute a lengthy reading, pass it out or mail it. If you want to avoid copyright hassles, point people to the book or article rather than scanning it. If your students don’t have a lot of bandwidth, give them a CD, DVD, or good old-fashioned video tape. Technology hasn’t replaced traditional methods of distribution; it supplements them. Use the best medium for your purpose.

Mistake #4: Forsake content for fluff.

Content is king. Build a basic, no-nonsense course first. Then go back and add extras as time permits. Don’t be seduced by a search for the perfect icon, the ideal graphic, the snappiest color scheme. "Bleeding-edge" technology is a time suck. Clip art is a cheap thrill that can never replace substantive content or fundamental tools. Get the real goods in place first, then, and only then, add the jewelry.

Mistake #5: Neglect navigation.

Content may be king, but without good navigation, everyone gets lost in the castle. Always give your Web site a simple table of contents, along with "Previous Page" and "Next Page" buttons. Consider adding a search system and any other signals that will help people find their way around.

Mistake #6: Stick to traditional teaching methods.

If you really want to teach online, you must do more than lecture. You must do more than assign readings. You must do more than test. These methods don’t really utilize the technology. Nor do they address the learning curve it represents. So, what should you do? Facilitate rather than lecture. Point to resources rather than invent everything yourself. Use online polls to take the measure of the group. Inspire collaboration. (Hundreds of research studies recommend it for the online classroom.) Encourage people to take responsibility for their own learning by helping them find, evaluate, understand, and apply knowledge pertinent to your course. How will you do all this? Find out how in FutureU’s Faculty Web Book.

Mistake #7: Try to answer every question yourself.

Written discussions, emails, and chats can add a valuable new dimension to your teaching, but if you try to write a substantive response to every single message yourself, you will soon want to retire. Instead, encourage participants to interact among themselves. Collect the answers you give repeatedly and store them together on a page of “frequently asked questions” (FAQs). Create boiler plate email responses to routine questions, such as “What’s the next assignment?–Check with your fellow students.” In summary, teach smarter, not harder.

Mistake #8: Assume that if you build it, they will come.

You can provide the best tools, the best learning activities, and the best content in the world but there’s no guarantee students will flock to your online course space, unless you provide skillful facilitation. Most unfacilitated, peer-based discussion lists on the Web have hundreds or even thousands of participants. That’s what it takes to build critical mass without a facilitator. Add a facilitator (That’s you!) and the conversation springs to life. With good facilitation you can expect at least 15 people in any group of 25 to participate regularly. With clear assignments and deadlines, you will get even more. Don’t rely on chance. Learn the art of online facilitation. (The FutureU Faculty Web Book has lots of helpful tips.)

Mistake # 9: Maintain low expectations and unclear deadlines.

Let’s face it. A lot of people procrastinate. A lot of students cram. But these old habits won’t work in a course that involves online communication. Why? Because of the workload!

Let’s say you ask everyone to post two messages a week for 12 weeks. That’s not much to expect, but it’s still enough to spell disaster–if even one participant waits a few weeks to meet their commitment. Suddenly, everyone in the course receives 8 or 10 messages, all at once, from the same person! As the instructor, you might read them, but almost no one else will, and hardly anyone will respond. They’ve moved on. They’re no longer interested in last month’s topic. It’s history. Even if you could get everyone in a 10-person course to read and respond to this last-minute effort, what a nightmare for you and the group! Yikes, that’s more than 200 potential messages to read! Instead, make sure your course has learning activities with daily deadlines and weekly summaries, punctuated by periodic exams, papers, or demonstrations of mastery that will keep the ball rolling.

Mistake #10: Fail to update your course every time you teach it.

Take advantage of your evolving knowledge of computers and Web resources by improving your navigation aids, instructions, and content. Most important of all, re-check all hyper-links, both internal to the course and external (to other Web sites), to make sure they still work. Web sites have a way of disappearing when their developers change Web addresses, lose interest, or go out of business. Nothing will diminish your credibility with students quite like a string of dead-end links. Always give your course a fresh look before its next showing.

That’s it. The ten biggest mistakes you can make when you deliver even a portion of a course online. If you can avoid these no-nos right from the start, you will save yourself a world of trouble and give yourself a much better chance of success in the cyber-classroom.

Claude

This weeks posting is a blatant commercial pitch for an e-book we are very proud of. And, it will definitely help your course participants get ready to learn online.

Learning online is NOT the same as learning in a classroom. Even though many if not most young people know how to surf the Web and hold an instant chat, no one teaches them how to learn online. It’s an art and a craft unto itself.

Besides, fewer and fewer students today are younger than springtime? As a result, your students may not have the computer know-how we take for granted in the young. They may be mothers out of the loop since before their kids were born. They may be retired seniors with plenty of enthusiasm but no keyboard experience. They may be working adults with jobs that don’t involve computers.

Never assume that your students are ready to excel in the electronic classroom. Even if most of your course will take place in a traditional classroom, if any part of course materials or interactions will take place online, you owe it to your students to prepare them for the experience.

From the time we’re six years old or younger, we know how to be a student in a regular classroom. We know to sit still when the teacher is talking and to raise our hands when we want to contribute. We know how to find our way to the school, look things up in the library, hand in an assignment, take a test. From kindergarten on, we know how.

But, do all your students know how to:

• Write an effective subject line for an email?
• Follow proper etiquette in an online discussion?
• Ask a question, wait their turn, or take the floor in a chat?
• Locate what they want on the Internet (amid a gazillion possibilities)?
• Submit an assignment by attaching it to an email?
• Facilitate a study group discussion online?
• Avoid permanent damage to their arms, hands, back, & eyes from computer use?

Maybe they do know how. Maybe they don’t. Most likely, some will have some of these skills, some will have others, and some will have none at all. Very few, if any, students will have a complete understanding of the process. That’s why we created the FutureU Student Web Book. By exposing your students to the Student Web Book, they can learn all the skills described above and many more. Plus, they will receive dozens of links to valuable resources for use in assignments.

To learn more about what’s in FutureU’s Student Web Book, check out the table of contents for Volume 1: Getting Started with Online Learning and for Volume 2: Mastering the Process of Online Learning.

A Special Price for Your Students

As a special bonus, because you purchased The Bargain Guide to Building Your Course Website, you can offer FutureU’s Student Web Book to your students for only $17.00. That’s 2/3rds off the regular retail price of $49.00 and cheaper even than the largest quantity discounts offered to businesses and schools.

Regular Pricing for Student Web Book
Quantity	Price	Discount
1	Retail: $49.00	0%
5 Pack	$199.00	25%
6-99	$33.00	33%
100+	$24.50	50%

Bargain Hunter’s Special Price
Quantity	Price	Discount
"http://www.futureustore.com/basket.php?quantity=1&product=20&add=1">One	$17.00 each	66.67%

This special discount price is available only to those who own a copy of the Bargain Hunter’s Guide to Building Your Course Web Site because that’s the only place where the purchasing link is published. Here’s the special FutureU E-Store link you can give to your students so they can get this special price:

http://www.futureustore.com/basket.php?quantity=1&product=20&add=1

Do your students—and yourself—a huge favor. Avoid bottlenecks later on. Give every student an equal chance at success. Recommend that every student new to e-learning buy a low-cost copy of the Student Web Book.

You get your own copy free (with special faculty annotations) when you buy the FutureU Faculty Web Book.

Check them both out today.

claude

Next time: Ten Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make When Teaching Online.

Sometimes, with all these new Internet-based technologies to choose from, it’s easy to forget one of the older, more reliable methods of communicating in real-time with your learners: the telephone.

When we get a group of learners together on the phone, we call that a teleconference. And one of the oldest distance teaching methods involves sending out course materials in the mail or by email attachment and then discussing them over the phone with a group of students. Students can, as well, work on small group projects over the phone, even if they don’t live in the same city. So remember to include the use of the telephone in your course planning.

We recommend FreeConferenceCall.Com for a free teleconferencing service. The connection service is free, but participants may have to pay long-distance charges if they live in a different area code from the number that the service assigns you for your meetings. One great feature is that you can record your meeting, then download the recording from the FreeConferenceCall.Com website and upload it to your course web site for future reference.

Gail and Claude

Next time: “”A Proven and Cost-Effective Way to Prepare Students for E-Learning.”

The latest, greatest technology to catch on in the virtual classroom is real-time, web-based meetings, aka, “web conferencing.” Web conferencing is a neat way to work together when you can’t all be in the same place. But, unlike the asynchronous parts of the virtual classroom, it does require that you all participate at the same time. This creates a challenge for participants in that if you have folks scattered about the world, some of them might have to join the meeting at some pretty strange times of night or day.

Hot Tip: One way to manage this real-time challenge is to use the Meeting Planner at http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html.

This clever little tool lets you enter multiple world cities from a drop down list and then it generates a table of times showing the overlapping times participants in those cities would be the least inconvenienced.

Another challenge in using web conferencing is that many of the products are quite expensive and the few cheap ones often offer too few features or lack support for more than one operating system. As yet, a stable and reliable open-source web conferencing system has not appeared. But we’ll mention a few, so-called “Web 2.0″ tools that are worth taking a look at.

On the positive side are a number of possible benefits to web conferencing, including:

• Free Voice-Over-the-Internet (VoIP) for real-time discussions
  
• Built in Chat
  
• Whiteboard for drawing and marking up images or files
  
• Desktop and Application sharing where the instructor and/or participants can show each other their respective desktops or individual open applications
  
• Live video images of who’s speaking
  
• Ability to share PowerPoint presentations and other media files such as audio and video clips
• Participant list and ability to control participation activities
  
• Polls & Quizzes
  
• And more…

Unlike the asynchronous virtual classroom, for which there are hundreds of research studies proving effectiveness and equivalent or superior learning outcomes, the jury is still out on the use of the real-time virtual classroom tools bundled into web conferencing software.

We think there is great potential if you apply the principles of pedagogically sound instructional design to the materials and activities you deliver using web conferencing.

We’ve used most of the major products, such as Adobe Connect (formerly Breeze), Elluminate, GoToMeeting, Wimba, and WebEx, and many of the “garage bands” such as Comotiv, Marratech, PictureTalk and Wave3 Session. Both groups show a wide variation in features and pricing that will require a careful assessment to avoid paying too much or buying too many or too few of the features you need. (We invite you to take advantage of our up-to-date expertise on web conferencing products and features by asking us to work with you to choose what would work best for you and your group. Call 415-648-2667 or email claude[at]futureu[dot]com for more information on how we can assist you.)

The Free Ones

Now for a few words about the free web conferencing tools available today. These tools have much promise, but are sometimes a bit unreliable. Try them each and see what kind of results you get. The first three, Yugma, DimDim, and Vyew are 100% browser based and so they work with any operating system.

Yugma

The free version of Yugma allows up to 10 participants at a time. For more than 10 participants, you can purchase a subscription to Yugma Pro starting at 20 bucks a month for 20 participants or $200 for the whole year.

DimDim

DimDim’s free version allows up to 20 participants at a time. For $99 a year our 20 people get additional features and the price goes up in 20-person increments like this: 40 people/room ($198/year), 60 people/room ($297/year), 80 people/room ($396/year), 100 people/room ($495/year). For nearly two grand a year you can have up to 1,000. That’s a pretty good deal for either end of the spectrum: free for small classes, five bucks a piece for up to a 100 and two bucks each for a thousand. And, if you’ve got the technical chops, DimDim has an open-source version you can install on your own server.

Vyew

Vyew is offering a new wrinkle to the web conferencing genre: “always on.” It offers most of the features of any web conferencing platform, plus “persistence” which makes it possible to go full circle, returning to asynchronous collaboration on the content of recorded meetings that have already taken place. This means that you can have a window open on your computer that you just leave open, kind of like you would with an instant messenger. Not only can you more easily call and hold a meeting, but you have instant access to recorded versions of all the meetings you’ve already held. In addition to the free consumer version, they also offer an “enterprise appliance” which is a box you can buy and clip to your own server rack that already has the software installed.

Claude and Gail

Next time: “Don’t forget Teleconferencing for Course Communications.”

Many people ask “What’s the difference between ‘chat’ and ‘instant messaging.’” From a user’s point of view, very little. They are both “synchronous”: all parties are online at the same time. They both allow one-to-one or many-to-many exchanges. With a Chat, however, you must stay in the "room" to know what’s happening, whereas Instant Messaging usually runs in the background while you do other work. A bell alerts you when someone you want to talk to logs onto the Internet. Then you can page them and start a conversation.

Advertisement: A chat can quickly turn to chaos without careful facilitation. Once more, we provide helpful guidelines in our Faculty Web Book.

Once again, you don’t need the Chat function of course management software to conduct a successful online chat. Want some chat software for free? Check out the big 4:

AOL Instant Messenger

Google Talk

MSN Messenger

Yahoo Instant Messenger

ICQ

ICQ (”I seek you”) doesn’t get as much press play as the others, but its every bit as functional and every bit as popular. It’s also the oldest chat client having been around since long before IM-ing became popular. With ICQ you may chat; send messages, files and URL’s; play games; or just hang out with your fellow ‘Netters’ while still surfing the Net. ICQ lets you choose the mode of communication, be it chat, voice, message board, data conferencing, file transfer or Internet games. It supports a variety of popular Internet applications and serves as a Universal Platform from which you may launch any peer-to-peer application (such as Microsoft NetMeeting). It may also be used in a multiple-user mode, so groups may conduct conferences or just ‘hang out’ on-line.

ICQ has a fully developed portal with lots of special-interest groups. With 100 million users, ICQ chat is arguably the most used Web-based chat system in existence. It may also be the best. Check it out and decide for yourself. The ICQ client is free.

Hot Tip: ICQ also offers what’s called the ICQPanel for your course Web site. You may install a chat applet right on the course home page, so visitors to your site may enter a chat that is currently in session, page you or any other ICQ user, and view ICQ chat rooms and Users Lists, even if they don’t have ICQ!

Caution: It’s always a good idea to be sure that everyone in your “chat” group has the same Instant Messenger or at least that different messengers are compatible. One option for “universal” chatting is Trillian. If you’re using Trillian, you can send and receive to anyone using any of the above instant messengers except Google Talk. And it works with IRC, too (described next).

IRC

Another free, old-time chat tool is IRC or Internet Relay Chat. Developed in the days before browsers, you can hold an IRC chat from the command line of any operating system. Yes, that means Windows, Macintosh or Unix (such as Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc.). The true import of this multi-platform capability is that you can hold a chat with any number of people, no matter what operating system they might have, including legacy systems like Mac, pre OS 9, or Microsoft, clear back to 2000, NT, 98, 95 or DOS. Believe it or not, there are some schools and the rare business or two that still have a mix of machines like that. But IRC is equally good if you just want to hook up your Linux, Max OSX and Windows XP users.

Skype: The New Kid on the Block

The newest chat tool on the web, and perhaps the most widely used, is Skype. Like the “messengers” listed above, it offers a text chat function, a voice message function, and a video function. Unlike the rest, however, Skype offers voice mail and the ability to call others or receive calls from others who just have a regular telephone. And recently, Skype has introduced a podcast-like capability called Skypecasts, that can include up to 100 people in a single conversation. Also, with a number of different third-party tools you can experience video calls as well. Skype works well with Google Talk too.

Twitter: The Infant in the Stroller

Even more recent than Skype, Twitter has become all the rage. We’ve attempted using it in learning environments, and to tell the truth, the 140 character limit per post can be a serious constraint sometimes. [Twitter.Com]

On the other hand, having such a constraint, along with good facilitation from you, can teach your learners a certain discipline of thought. In addition, there is a standard “best practice” in chatting that is actually helped by the Twitter character limit. What’s that best practice? The practice of using chat like a CB Radio in which the current speaker is allowed to “hold the floor” until they type in an agreed upon symbol such as “oo” for “over and out”—meaning “I now relinquish the floor.” So even if they run up against the 140 character limit, if they have not typed “oo” they retain the floor. The character limit, hopefully, provides feedback about how long winded they are being. It will definitely provide others with evidence to point at should they decide to suggest that that participant may want to let someone else “speak” for a while.

So, with your facilitation, you might be able to teach your learners to use Twitter in an effective manner for those types of discussions that require or benefit from a rapid-fire exchange of ideas.

Gail and Claude

Next up: “What About Using Web Conferencing for Course Communications?”

Siteground.Com (the provider we mentioned before, from whom we will get an affiliate commission for your purchase) has free automated installation of phpBB, vBulletin, Simple Machines Forum (SMF), and Invision . These are, arguably, the most popular of the lot and Siteground offers great support. (Just click on one of the links above then type “forum hosting” into the search blank.)

GoDaddy (our other provider, from whom we don’t get a commission) offers phpBB, Simple Machines Forum, Vanilla Forum, and YetAnotherForum as free add-ins for any hosting account.

claude and Gail

Next time: “Is there a place for Chat in your course?”

It’s a kind of group email. It differs from email in that more than two people can easily participate, follow along, build on the "threads" of the conversation, store and retrieve what they’ve said.

Is an online discussion just like email? No. Is it just like a spoken discussion? No. It has its own rules, its own etiquette, its own keys to success. For much more on online discussions and how to lead one that truly encourages learning—without doubling your workload as a teacher—check out the Faculty Web Book we keep touting.

Now, where will your discussion take place? In software designed especially for this purpose. Do you need course management software? No, you do not. In fact, numerous discussion software packages that are very low cost are actually superior–yes, better, easier, more effective–than the ones provided by the leading course management software companies.

If you are like us and want the very best software for your purpose, we’ll tell you where to find the best discussion software in the world today.

The software products we are about to show you are all incredibly good. Incredibly easy. And, incredibly, they’re all cheap.

They make it possible for you to hold meaningful interactions with any group of people, whether teammates or course participants, no matter where they are or what time of day they are available to contribute. You can communicate on a single topic or several. With all your participants at once or small study groups. For a week, a month, or an entire semester.

And it won’t cost you, or your customers and students, an arm and a leg.

For example, check out Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, Yuku, and My Free Forum.

Google Groups

Google Groups is one of the e-mail list services we mentioned earlier as a way to put your course files on the Web. Google Groups allows you to either visit your groups or receive update emails to keep track of what’s going on.

Yahoo Groups

Yahoo Groups is the other e-mail list service we mentioned earlier as a way to put your course files on the Web. The software that handles forums in Yahoo Groups is plenty good enough for asynchronous discussions. Remember, Yahoo Groups has three options for monitoring group activity: 1) you receive an email every time someone leaves a message in the discussion, 2) you receive a summary email once a day, or 3) you must visit the group Web site to see if there were postings. Yahoo Groups is free but it also has banner ads.

Yuku

Yuku is a web-based (no downloads or installations), customizable and configurable discussion software that is HTML compatible. It has profanity filters and the ability to link/integrate it directly into your course Web site. It also happens to be available in German and Spanish. Price? Unbelievably, free if you’ll put up with ads and only 7 bucks for 6 months or 12 bucks for a whole year if you want to get rid of the ads.

MyFreeForum.Org

MyFreeForum.Org is a UK vendor offering free hosting of phpBB, one of the most popular open source discussion boards available. It’s advertising supported, of course, but they are mostly banner ads at the top and the bottom and there aren’t many of them.

Hot Tip: Among the services we’ve mentioned elsewhere in this blog, Community Zero also offers pretty good built-in discussion software.

Can’t stand the ads?

Don’t be turned off by the ads on the discussion pages, if there are any. They don’t interfere with the discussion in any way. You just write an exciting discussion question, post it in the free software discussion space, and invite your participants to join you there. However, if you’re willing to pay a license fee and want even more flexibility in your discussion software—without any ads at all—then check out these discussion packages.

WebBoard

Originally released in 1995, WebBoard was an early promoter of communication, sharing, and the entire concept of electronic community. Morphed into Akiva, the current version of WebBoard runs in the 4 to 5 figure range if you want it on your own server. Hardly a bargain. It’s a wonder they can stay in business with all the perfectly terrific open source products available (see below).

However, many people swear by WebBoard. You can give them a try at Onvix.Net, where you may purchase web site hosting that includes WebBoard starting at $35.00 a month depending on how much storage space you need.

Discus

Created in 1997, Discus is currently used by over 100,000 customer sites and will run under nearly any web server configuration using Unix or Windows servers. Discus has proven to be highly scalable and highly stable.

Discus Freeware is the free version. It offers several levels of security, plus some flexibility in the look and feel.

Discus Pro has even more features and requires a one-time license fee of $150. Discusware will install Discus Pro on your in-house server for only 80 bucks.

Advertisement: For best results in any online discussion, purchase a copy of our Faculty Web Book and check out the guidelines on participation and facilitation. Then sit back and watch the discussion unfold (with a few judiciously placed facilitations by you, of course).

WWWBoard

If you feel up to a moderate technical challenge, you may want to check out WWWBoard. It’s free, but requires some programming knowledge to install and manage. It’s available for download at Matt’s Script Archive

WWWBoard lets you "thread" discussions, sort messages by author or date, and archive past messages. We think WWWBoard is the easiest to use discussion software we’ve found, and it is especially good for teaching because it allows you to quickly see the entire conversation in a single web page. No more clicking around to try to follow the train of thought. It’s all there in sorted order at the click of a mouse. Of all the asynchronous discussion software we’ve used at FutureU over the years, we like this one the best for its simplicity and its ability to see an entire discussion all on a single web page. (Want to know more about threaded discussions? You guessed it. We cover that in detail in our Faculty Web Book.)

Hot Tips: Here are two more Hot Tips that will enrich every online discussion:

•  Plan for your asynchronous online discussion to unfold across a longer span of time than you might need in the classroom. For example, a one-hour classroom discussion might take three to five days to unfold online.


•  Give each discussion topic a start and stop date. Discussions with no boundaries seldom take off. Even if they do, they usually fizzle out without a sense of "completion.".

claude and Gail

Next up: “What about those popular open-source discussion boards?”

First, the biggest group of people use Microsoft’s full-featured Outlook or, at least, Outlook Express. It comes as a part of the Microsoft Office Suite and it has all the bells and whistles you could possible want. The danger, of course, is the same as with any Microsoft product that touches the Internet; the “crackers” are out to get Microsoft and they spend thousands of hours writing trojans, worms and viruses specifically targeted at Outlook. So, if you decide to use Outlook, be sure to also install security protection.

We use Outlook on one of our home machines, and we’ve installed a group of packages alongside it to protect us from the crackers. These are all free and they do as good a job at protecting us as any commercially available software. They include AVG Virus Checker from Grisoft, Zone Alarm Firewall (free Personal Edition), AdAware, and WinPatrol. AdAware prevents spyware from being installed and WinPatrol prevents vendors like Quicktime, RealPlayer, or Adobe from installing themselves in the StartUp folder or installing useless daily update checkers that steal valuable computer memory.

On another of our machines, we still use Qualcomm’s Eudora primarily because that user doesn’t want to go through the Outlook learning curve. (A perfectly legitimate reason, in our estimation.)

A new contender worth looking at is the open source Thunderbird email from mozzila.org. It’s free, its robust, and it integrates with the Firefox browser.

Finally, one of the oldest and easiest to use email clients is Pegasus Mail. It has all the features of any heavy-weight email package, so its well worth considering. Since arriving on the scene in 1990 it has served millions of users. It runs on Windows and is still available for old Microsoft DOS-based machines. It comes in language versions for English, German, French, Catalan, Czech, and Dutch. And its still free after all these years.

claude

Next time: “Asynchronous Discussion: Your Most Valuable Communication Tool.”

Hot Tip: Yes, there is a skill to email. And we’re going to teach you that skill. In less than a minute, you’ll know how to make email your servant, not your master.

Here’s how:

• Require participants to ask questions of one another (in the discussion forum)–before they ask you. This could cut your emails in half.
• Build (or get your learners to build) a bank of "Frequently Asked Questions" and point your learners to it. This will cut your email even further.
• Create a filter in your email system so that all messages from learners go to a separate folder or folders. Then, you can check this student email all at once, instead of having it spill out all over your life. This might require that you train your participants to add a keyword or code to all the email they send to you. But it will be worth the effort in the end.
• Teach your course participants to use effective subject lines. A good subject line should read like a newspaper headline and make the viewer want to open the email, or, at least, have a good idea of what’s in the email without opening it.
• Pro-actively encourage effective subject lines by modeling them yourself, so your participants will always know which message to re-open to find that particular due date.

These are valuable, proven methods that could make the difference between a bad and a good experience for you and your customers or students as you venture into the new world of e-learning. Learn more about best practices for email in our Faculty Web Book and our Student Web Book.

Next time: “Which Email Program Should You Use for Course Discussions.”

Is a course Web site really worth all the fuss?

It is if you use it as the focal point for something your students CAN’T get any other way: that is, the substantive, meaningful interactions that occur in online discussions, chats, and emails.

This is the real surprise of the digital classroom. Professors who have mastered the art of online facilitation are reporting something remarkable. Online participation is often superior to classroom participation. Not just equal to but better!

Why? Because most online communication is written, and people work harder when they write. They think things through. They "craft" what they say. They take care. They go deep. An idea blurted out and soon forgotten in the classroom here gets the full treatment. First comes the sudden brainstorm, followed by a fleshing out for an initial draft, then more careful reflection and, finally, a refined version for posting in the discussion. Online interaction sticks in the mind. It enhances learning. It’s a valuable addition to absolutely any course.

Not just for the few, either. In a traditional classroom, a handful of students lean forward eager to talk. A handful more contribute if you squeeze the words out of them. But, you can’t throttle every student into participating; so you do your best and accept the fact that most will just sit there all semester like so many warts on a frog.

Well, guess what? In an asynchronous online discussion, more students volunteer. They actually say something. Without being prompted. Could be they want to make sure you know they showed up. Or, they might feel less shy when no one can see them. Whichever, the process works. People "talk" online and in the process they learn.

So here’s what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to link your course Web site to an asynchronous online discussion software. You might also want to hold a chat or two. And, you should give your students a way to submit their assignments electronically and interact with you privately by email.

Do you need course management software to do any of this?

Of course not.

You’ve already got email. Just provide some strict rules for when private email is appropriate, then filter all student messages into a separate folder. (For more tips on email, see the Faculty Web Book that Gail and I put together.)

Next time: “Make Room for Email in Course Discussions.”

claude