Distance learning is a recently new phenomenon that has received much attention in the past ten years. I have just completed my FIT’s project and while I have learned some great things about teaching and learning in asynchronous and synchronous environments. Both types of learning situations have it strengths and weakness. Many of my colleagues talked about social presences (i.e., the idea that people have a need to feel excepted and communicate with others) and the frustration many of them had with getting responses from there FIT’s group. I do not agree as I was able to engage the students and they responded to all my email, yet I did however, feel like an outsider.
I listened to many FIT’s members sharing their experiences and I gained valuable insight from each of them. It was great that we were able to share information in class as it allowed everyone to further develop their online teaching skills and how to utilize those skills once we find ourselves in an online situation. What I would recommend for further FIT’s project is that the FIT’s facilitators have some say as to what grade the students receive on a unit/activity.
For example, if we want students to respond more through discussion board related activities, the professor might want to consider giving FIT’s facilitators more responsibility as it relates to grading a unit. The FIT’s facilitator does not have to give the students a final grade in the class, but have some input on the students grade on an unit discussion.
Allowing FIT’s facilitator, more responsibility would probably cause the group facilitated, by the FIT’s facilitators to respond faster and create resource sharing between both groups. While distance learning is new to the world of education, we will learn more about this technology as we gather more research and experience online learning and teaching.
