I would like to investigate the amount of time involved in developing a unit of study compared to developing the same unit for traditional instruction. I would like to follow the time investment over the course of several semesters. I would also like to explore whether there is recognition at the administrative level for the different level of engagement in development of such units. I suspect that initially the investment of time is intensive – but moderates somewhat????? I do not think that administators consider the load on educators who are agressively developing such instruction.
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November 8, 2008 at 12:17 pm
This is an interesting idea and a lot of research has been done on it already — mostly as a justification for abandoning efforts to teach online.
The critical factor that is most often overlooked is the instructor’s fluency and familiarity in using the tools. Since most people are far from expert in dealing with online tools, my suspicion is that the numbers are vastly over stated. Specifically, items like “making a web page” should be done relatively rapidly — including the development graphical content (if any). My sense is that most online teachers do not find putting text and graphics together on a web page to be a trivial matter and it should be.