Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

E-Courses... A continuation from the day before

E-School Course Development

I listed some positive and negative differences between an E-Course and a traditional classroom setting in an earlier blog. I knew when I presented these bullets that many would wonder exactly what I was referring to. For example I said that an E-Course requires more out of class preparation than a traditional classroom. Here is how I see it.

To me the ideal E-Course would have the following pages. There would be:

An Introductory Page

A Home Page

A Classroom Page

A Lounge Page

8 Lesson Plans,.

40 Lectures.

A glossary of terms,

Example forms

Examples of lesson’s objectives.

A compendium of FAQ’s

Examples of lesson feedback to the students…

To produce a Course Page requires a working knowledge of MLWrite which is a utility program for providing enhanced graphics to a course page. Developing a single course page easily takes a work session just to program, let alone learning the language and developing the material.

Then there is the research which can take several weeks.

Now I know that all E-Courses are not this extensively developed. On the contrary very few are. However at New Horizon’s Academy many of these pages and materials are required. So when I say developing an E-Course, and doing the job right is a big undertaking for an instructor, that is no understatement. If an instructor is lucky enough to inherit a course that is already fully developed, much of this work is already done, however this brings us to an interesting point.

Unlike anything I have seen before in academia, the instructor in an E-Class owns the course. They can pass the course on to others however, they are under no real obligation to do so. Now this begs the question, how does the Administrative Staff at an E-School maintain quality if they don‘t own the educational materials. The answer is that they do this by recruiting teachers who they feel are competent and willing to teach a course. Then they can levy requirements on minimum essential course page development. They can also refuse to certify a course or instructor until the materials meet the school standards and the instructor is deemed competent to teach.

The Next question that leaps to mind is how do you get the students to meet the standards of a given course. The answer in a nutshell is that you simply can’t. If a student fails to participate in the instruction they can be dropped from the course and this happens with some degree of frequency. However, each instructor must decide where this line gets drawn and get the administration involved when it’s time to drop the hammer.

Since these courses are not officially sanctioned by a professional certifying agency they don’t have the traditional weight of grades, pass/fail and diplomas although some instructors offer these as unofficial incentives. So these traditional tools don’t really carry the same weight as in a certified, accredited, sanctioned, official Institutional type program.

This begs the question, (Is there no end?) why then do the students take them. The answer is because they want to learn and the courses are essentially free. I know of no E-Class instructor who feels they are monetarily compensated in any way, shape manner or form. They do it because they love helping students become better writers. (they are given Gps but most wind up plowing these back into the system) The litmus of the quality of the Instruction is demonstrated by the filling of the classrooms each semester. One of the reasons that an E-School fails is because of reputation passed by word of mouth. If the courses are not worthwhile nobody signs up or those that do soon realize they are wasting their time . I will not dwell further on what happens when an E-School fails to measure up to its billing.