On the Other Side of the Screen: Confessions of an Online Student

For me, one of the greatest perks of teaching at a college is the opportunity to take classes for free.  I get to sample various topics I'm interested in, and I'm interested in a lot of things!  But, of course, I do have a full-time job and then some, so like a lot of our students I look to online classes to allow me to fit school into my schedule. I also teach online classes every semester and have for years, so I'm quite familiar with online education. However, being an online student has really given me insight on the challenges our students face. One of the biggest, I've found, is simply interacting with the course materials.

 I'm not an idiot. I thought I'd better clarify that right up front, because I've found myself making the same irritating mistakes that drive me up a wall when my students do them in my classes.  I've misread instructions and quiz questions. I've skimmed over text and jumped straight into watching embedded videos, missing important information.  I've clicked through folders and files, trying to remember where I saw the class due dates or the reading list. Remember, I'm a professional student, an honest-to-Betsy Ph.D. with (presumably) better-than-average study skills, taking introductory classes at a community college. And yet, it is SO easy in an online class to get lost, to misunderstand a direction or an assignment or to skim over online text. And that makes it so much harder to succeed.

A couple of years ago, I had a student who HATED my online class.  He couldn't find course materials.  He didn't understand the schedule of assignments. He'd email me repeatedly for clarification, and grew increasingly hostile when my explanations didn't make things any clearer for him.  In his eyes I was just a bad, bad teacher with a mess of a Blackboard shell. And I just couldn't figure out how to help him, as I'd made my class as simple and as straightforward as I could. How could he not understand what was so clear to me? I could find everything necessary for the class.  It was all there. Why couldn't he figure it out?

One thing I repeat again and again in my critical thinking class is that "different brains work differently."  This is usually in the context of discussing how people see the world from different angles depending on their background and experiences, but it is equally appropriate when discussing online education.  I try to make my classes as clear and organized as I can, and they make perfect sense to me. But then I take online classes from other teachers and I get frustrated and confused.  Objectively, I know that their classes are designed in a way that makes perfect sense to them and that they have taken as much care with the design as I do with mine.  But my brain works differently.  As did the brain of my frustrated student. As do the brains of all our students.

 Of course this can also be an issue in F2F classes, but for whatever reason, I find the problem magnified in the online setting. Perhaps it is the lack of metacommunication.  Or maybe the missing component is the opportunity to ask and answer questions on the fly. Certainly online classes can be isolating, leading to a sense that you are the only one struggling with the material, that you are on your own.  I don't have an answer.  But I am certainly now much more aware of the potential disconnect between what I upload and what students experience on the other side of the screen.