For my Distance Learning course at Illinois State University, I had to take two quizzes this week.
As I took the first quiz,
I worked hard at not answering the questions “the correct way” to make myself
look good. Even so, I ended up with a “perfect score” for being a good match
for being an online student. I found this to be interesting in that I have had
discussions from two different angles in the past few weeks.
 |
| Moody Distance Learning |
In one conversation, I was talking with other members of the
leadership team at the college where I teach about a problem we were having
with a particular student. This student was having extreme difficulty in their
classes, and we were lamenting the fact that we did not have a process in place
for determining whether a student would be a good fit for our online program or
not. Although simple, this quiz would be a good initial screening tool to see
if someone might be successful in taking classes in an online environment.
In the second conversation, I was discussing with my wife
how many of my classes at Illinois State University were either online or
hybrid. So, while I teach online college classes and while I am attending a
“brick and mortar” university, I am currently an online student more than a
face-to-face student.
 |
| Moody Bible Institute |
The second quiz evaluated whether an individual was ready to be an online instructor. This too
is a very timely resource for me to look at as the leadership team at the
school where I teach is constantly in dialogue about how to evaluate the
readiness of people to teach online. In my role, I teach and mentor new online
professors; however, often times, I get people who may have been professors for
years in a traditional setting, but then struggle with many of these specific
issues that this quiz addresses. For our particular situation, I believe that
we could personalize several of these questions and again have a much better
screening process to see where prospective instructors are at. It would also be
a good discussion starter with new teachers.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about either of these quizzes
and how we can continue to improve on both finding the right students and the right
faculty to make online learning the best that it can be!
Andrew
