Dr. Elia Hatfield is Assistant Professor of Spanish and runs the Spanish MAT program, a fully-online Masters program. We asked Dr. Hatfield to share her experience and advice about teaching online.
What is your experience teaching online?
I have 15 years of experience teaching online. In 2004, I developed my first online course. It was about Civilization and Culture of Latin America. I came to Lamar in 2015, I have 5 years teaching online at Lamar. From my perspective, teaching online is an effective alternative mechanism for delivering instruction. So, my primary goal when learning how to teach online was to learn how this mechanism works.
Teaching online can be a challenge, but once I familiarized myself with the program everything flows appropriately. My first challenge is always to program my courses and understand that every detail that I include or omit in the course is very important. For example, if I do not put attention to the small details of the assignment, my students will be asking questions by email or I will not see the results I am expecting from the students. The key words here are organization and precision in delivering information.
Collaborative work is always important. Throughout the years I have noticed that the students’ perspective is crucial to the success of the program in terms of organization and content. Then, once I complete my program, I ask another person to review it, to make sure that the students will clearly understand the instructions.
Most students will complete the assignments and respond well to the material, but if they do not find a specific assignment, they will communicate it immediately. Over the years I have noticed that students will always ask questions, even if you course looks perfect.
Can you discuss one or two strategies or activities that you use in your online classes that really helps students learn and grow?
In my regular online courses, I develop several activities for students, such as discussions, reflective journals, essays, book reviews, presentations, class notes and most importantly, the live conference.
Reflective journals. These sound very informal, but students need to provide an answer to specific questions about a product and read and analyze an academic article to support their argument. In this activity students can provide their own point of view. Students analyze and synthesize their own arguments in a reflective argument. They reflect rather than memorize information.
Students’ presentations. Students select a specific topic; they research and they share their knowledge with their classmates and me. This is a good opportunity to interact with their classmates and share a specific research, analysis, synthesis.
Technology offers you the possibility for organization, precision, quantity and quality of work and time saving.
I usually program 5 modules and I include 3 weeks in each module. In each week I have 1 reflective journal with a specific question about the lecture programmed for one specific week. One benefit for me as an instructor is that I do no have to worry about forgetting a question related to the topic we discussed in the interactive classroom. Everything is programmed from the beginning of the semester. So, the student knows exactly what is expected from the instructor.
What would be your advice to teachers just beginning to teach online, who might be struggling with the new context?
Get familiar with the system. Lamar offer several videos on how to use the system. Be bold and ask questions about the program to the instructional designers and technicians. When I came to Lamar, I had to update my knowledge of Blackboard. I had prior experience with Canvas, D2L, and eCollege, so I had to adapt to the new Blackboard platform. I must thank the instructional designers, not just for training me and for the workshops they organized year by year, but for recording all the educational videos available for new teachers.
We are always transferring knowledge to the students. We use various forms of communication, the traditional blackboard, handouts, bluebooks, videos, audio, labs. Blackboard is just another tool we can use to transfer knowledge.
Work collaboratively. Ask questions to faculty who may know or have experience working with the program. It would very helpful to see how other faculty have organized the virtual classroom. Set up Blackboard from the beginning of the semester and assume you have a hybrid classroom and you need to have all materials available for students. When I teach face to face, I already program and organize all the assignments in Blackboard, so the students have no excuse to miss any assignments. Everything is programmed in Blackboard.
Teach a class the same way you do it in the classroom or like when you go to a conference. I always put myself in front of the camera. If you are afraid that someone will be recording you, just concentrate on the topic that you are developing. If necessary, write your main points in a pdf document. This will allow you to concentrate on your topic. If a student asks a difficult question, I will ask the student to email me. Your course could be beautifully designed, well organized, but if you do not interact with the students, your course is “just another correspondence course”.
Write from the student’s perspective. I always ask a student or another instructor to review my course, just to make sure that my students will read the information I need to share with them.
