The Days and Nights of an Online Trainer
By Lesley
Darling
Online training: very hot topic. Major impact on how people learn. Changing how companies train employees . . . et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
In all the discussion about this new training-delivery method, we haven’t heard much, if anything, about what effect online training will have on the trainers themselves.
If you picture a trainer in front of a
classroom full of live people, you might want to rethink that image. Teaching in the online world is an entirely
different animal. We talked to two
people who are serious online trainers.
They each teach several online courses and have been in the online environment
from Day One. Here’s a look at their
experiences.
The class is the thing
Both Dodson and Bankston teach
introductory and higher-level courses, lasting anywhere from two to 12
weeks. In general, the courses have
syllabus templates so, according to Bankston, “we know how 75 percent of the
course will go. The other 25 percent is
what’s the most interesting.”
Classes begin with a series of postings
to the training site’s message board.
Dodson and Bankston post information about themselves and a general
welcome to the class—what students should expect, how to get the most out of
the class, topics, homework, additional materials.
“That’s where I set the tone of the
class,” says Bankston.
Dodson also lets her students know up
front that she’s a woman. “With a first
name like Mickey,” she says, “I’ve had students in class for 12 weeks and
they’d write a note saying ‘Mr. Dodson, you’re the best teacher!’”
Students often send introductory emails
back. Bankston notes that he’s had up
to 100 messages per day during the opening weeks of a class. More typically, he sees around 40 questions
and comments each day. At the end of
class, students posts “usually taper down to 10 to 20 questions.”
Students review their assigned course
materials each week, and then post their questions can comments to the training
site message board. Interestingly,
interactions in online courses tend to be more in-depth. For one thing, the instructor has more time
to reflect on the question and respond.
Also, says Dodson, “I give a broader answer so the whole class can
benefit.”
Bankston also conducts live chats in
hosted site chatrooms, usually twice per course.
“Students really like that,” he
says. “It’s the next best thing to
having an instructor actually work on your network.”
Class
dynamics
Think controlling a roomful of 30
students is a handful? Try 500. That’s the average number of students in one
of Dodson’s HTML classes. Typically,
she says, only around 50 to 60 students participate actively—which means they
regularly post assignments, comments and questions.
Making the online classroom “real” is a
conscious process, says Dodson.
Feedback and interactivity are the keys. In most online classes, for instance, the first weeks are active,
and activity decreases as the weeks progress.
“In my classes, activity increases as
the class goes on,” she says. “That’s
because I give feedback, my TAs give feedback, and I encourage students to
visit one another’s pages and comment on them.
As the students get involved, they build a classroom community. I’ve seen them respond to the interactivity,
I see it in their course evaluations.”
Dodson also uses the “personal touch”
and her sense of humor to increase the comfort level. “I make a point of remembering active students, and I say hello
when they come back for another course.
And I try to lighten things up if they get frustrated.”
The topics that Bankston teaches “can
be dry,” he admits. “But when you get a
spunky, interactive class, it’s a ball.
Online, I see more sharing of information among students because there’s
less competition. Instead of taking a
note and keeping it to themselves, students post that note online.”
Reading personalities into emails
becomes an art form for online instructors.
“You get a sense of students’
personalities,” says Bankston. “You see
attitudes like, ‘I’ve been in this business for three years and designed more
networks than God,’ versus ‘This is my first class and first network—please
help me.’ This is typical of people from mixed backgrounds who have used simple
networks. One person that grew up with one type of network is naturally biased
against something new, but other students often chime in with that unique
experience that may change a person’s beliefs.”
What may surprise people is that some
of the same class control issues that crop up in live teaching come up in an
online course--personality clashes, for example.
“We’ve occasionally had real
flashpoints,” Bankston relates.
“Someone on the class message board will says one kind of network server
is better, and someone disagrees. It
can go from there and go ballistic!”
Fortunately, interactions such as that are rare events. “You have to put on your personnel
management hat,” he says. “I’ll tell
them that we can all learn together.”
Says Dodson, “I don’t allow any
hot-dogging by people who take a class just to show off what they know. For instance, in my intro to HTML class, I
point out that it’s an introductory course and that I and the TAs won’t comment
on any page that doesn’t address the assignment.”
Both instructors use any conflicts as a
catalyst for interaction and learning, while at the same time managing them
carefully and coaching students on how to disagree online.
Who’s on
line?
Bankston and Dodson each see
differences in the kinds of students they teach in their online courses.
Says Bankston, “I see a lot more
inexperienced people, because online courses are an easy and cost-effective way
for them to break into the field.”
Those kinds of students make the class “more dynamic. I have students asking all levels of
questions because they’re at different experience levels. That can make it tougher on the instructor
because you sometimes assume a level of knowledge or access to technology
that’s not always there. If I see a
pattern to their questions, I’ll create additional lesson materials to help.”
Dodson’s experience with her students
focuses on another interesting aspect of online learning: “My classes are filled with people from
China, New Zealand, Australia.” The classes,
she says, “bring the world closer.
These people become very close; they begin to help one another, call one
another by their first names.”
Cultural nuances in such situations are
important. “I had a student from
Malaysia,” Dodson says. “He didn’t post
anything until three weeks into a course, when he offered a suggestion to
another student’s problem. He said he
hadn’t posted before because he was nervous about his English. I encouraged him--his answer was right on,
and his English was perfect. He was
posting for the rest of the class.”
Investing
the time
Dodson teaches seven classes, not all
at the same time. For each class, she
spends “two to three hours per day. If
I have five classes going, I work about 12 hours a day. That's not often, however.”
Both Dodson and Bankston follow a
regular routine. Dodson’s day begins
around 5 a.m. (her preference, and not a mandatory!): “I get coffee and go online.
I pick up my mail from the sites and from my teaching assistants. The TAs catch questions that I need to
address immediately, or they alert me to sites that need to be looked at. Then I look through the questions and
comments and respond to them.”
Sometimes the students are still in the classroom, and they’re “shocked”
when Dodson’s answer pops up.
If any questions require her to do
research, she saves the question and posts a message that she’s working on
it: “I want my students to know that
their questions will be answered within five hours.” Dodson goes offline, does any research she needs to and then
repeats her visit to the classroom after lunch. In the afternoon, she often designs web pages that show the
solution to student questions; she posts the pages to her own site so everyone
can visit there and learn from one another’s questions.
Finally, later in the evening, Dodson
visit her classroom again—three times a day is her habit.
Bankston checks messages from his
students in the early morning and evening in a procedure much like
Dodson’s. On average, per class, he
spends about two or three hours a day online, which later tapers to about an hour
per class. He says that he spends about
the same amount of time offline preparing for his classes—about three to six
hours per Sunday afternoon—as he would prepping for a live class.
Bankston also works offline to make his
courses more informative.
“If I run across information during the
course of a normal business day that would help out in the course, I take notes
on it that I keep in a journal. At
home, I’ll create material that goes up on my website for the next class
session.”
The best
part
Clearly, Dodson and Bankston find
something rewarding about the life of an online instructor. And what they like seems to be the area in
which they are in closest sync.
“I love to teach,” says Dodson, “and
I’ve always taught during my career.
With online courses, I get to work from home. I don’t have to go to an office and sit in a cubicle.” Dodson also travels a good bit for her
“other” life as a seminar leader, and she still keeps up with her classes: “I can teach anywhere—whether I’m traveling
or at the beach.”
She also finds rewards in the work
itself: “I’ll have a student in a
FrontPage class, for example, who doesn’t even know how to turn on a
computer! Twelve weeks later, I visit
the web page that’s his final assignment, and I’m awestruck by how good it
is. I love that, because it’s something
I gave that person—the chance to put his vision on the Internet.”
“The best part of online teaching is when you solve a special problem for a student,” Bankston says. “When you generate discussion that helps students understand and not be afraid of technology, that leads them to professional growth, there’s the sweet spot.”
He, too, travels a good deal in his
“other” life with his consultancy: “Online courses give me the flexibility to
connect while I’m traveling and still teach.
It’s the same for my students; they can take a class any time and any
place they want to.”
Lesley Darling is chief learning
officer at Element K (www.elementk.com), responsible for the overall online
experience at the education Website.
Darling has more than 10 years experience in the training industry and
has delivered talks and presented at CTS, CTW, Brainshare, Influent and various
vendor-specific conferences and events.
She co-wrote “Training for Results,” an article published in Training
Magazine.
Because online training is
relatively new, instructors who want to give it a try may not know all the
ins and outs of the beast. Here are
some tips: ·
Be aware of how much time you’ll need to spend offline. You still need to prepare for class, and you may need to
create extra materials personalized for students. In addition, because you have take time to respond, students
expect more in-depth answers to their questions. ·
Promote interaction among your students. Ask open-ended questions, just as you
would in a live classroom setting.
Send emails to students who aren’t posting questions, but are
visiting the message boards.
Encourage students to answer one another’s questions and respond to
comments. This creates an
environment where it’s OK to make mistakes. ·
Pay attention.
Your answers are posted permanently, for all to see! Unlike a one-time live classroom
workshop, if you feel your answer was lacking, you can go back and add a
more informed response to the message thread. ·
It’s about the teaching. Remember, even though online training takes place in a
high-tech setting and—at this point, at least--tends to be about technical
topics, your stellar teaching skills are the most vital part of your online
course.
Tips for online
trainers