Face the Music
The phrase, “time to face the music” started appearing in American literature and verbiage in the mid-19th century. The origin of this phrase is unclear, but there are two good possibilities. The first likely origin came from the tradition of a disgraced military officer being drummed out of their regiment. The second theory is that it’s referring to the moment before an actor would go on stage and face the orchestra pit.
Both origins emphasize the conclusion that you must, at some point, face the consequences of your actions, no matter what they may be. When it comes to online learning, we need to discover what practices are best practices. What online learning actions are leading to positive consequences for our students?
Are We Doing It Right?
Online learning has been in education for over 30 years now, and the results and practices still vary drastically between instructors and schools. This leads us to question what practices yield the best results.
A recent study from Eduventures Research, called the CHLOE 2, offers some interesting insight into current online learning practices.
According to the study, when it comes to online learning there are four main groups of instruction type.
- Extensive interaction and personalization (13% of the sample)
- More interaction than personalization (45%)
- More personalization than interaction (4%)
- Limited interaction and personalization (37%)
It is interesting to note here that respondents think about half of their fully online programs don’t generate much student interaction. This somewhat goes against some common beliefs that the more student interaction, the more successful the students.
Online pedagogy can include a lot of interaction between instructor and student, or no interaction at all. According to the study, only 16 percent of survey respondents said they found a balance between the two. Is this balance important?
According to the study, institution top motivator for introducing new technology is to improve students experience and improving faculty experience was the next highest motivator. This leads one to assume that overall, online learning platforms are here to stay.
What We’ve Learned
If there is one thing to be learned from the CHLOE 2 study, it’s that we still have not found the silver bullet. When facing the online learning music, it must be done on an individual basis. What will help your students be the most successful (and you feel the most comfortable as an instructor) is finding ways to integrate your online curriculum in a way that fits your student’s needs.
If you’d like to see how Ascend Education’s curriculum can fit your student’s needs, click here.
