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Developing a Mini-course for Prospective Distance Learners

by Sloan-C

Abstract
As part of the work for the ALN Workshop on "Getting Started with On-line Courses", a short course was developed for prospective students for the Rochester Institute of Technology’s distance learning courses. The mini-course, RIT Distance Learning 101, was designed to address the questions prospective students might have about how one accesses and learns from an RIT distance learning course.

I. THE DISTANCE LEARNING 101 COURSE

Distance learning students of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) include not only students from the upstate New York area but also students from across the United States as well as many foreign countries. This geographically diverse population of students is made possible by RIT’s extensive use of the anytime, anywhere instructional format. Prospective students for RIT distance education who have experienced only traditional classroom education are often puzzled, however, about how the distance education experience will work for them. This course was designed to provide prospective students with answers to many of their questions: how distance learning students register, obtain course materials, communicate with the instructor and other students in the course, hand in assignments, work on team projects, take quizzes and exams, get assistance, and – most importantly of all – how students learn through a distance education format. The course is accessed by prospective students through the RIT Distance Learning homepage.

A. Course Goals
An underlying assumption of the mini-course is that prospective students will want to spend a minimal amount of time getting a general sense of how students are able to have a positive academic experience through distance education. It is assumed that the students will not want to know the details of how that experience is delivered, but will want to know enough to evaluate whether or not their educational goals can be met through this educational delivery system within the framework of their personal and professional lives. At the same time, the prospective student may want the opportunity to explore distance education more deeply or request more information, and that opportunity should be built into the course. The goals of the course, therefore, are to provide the student with a complete, but brief, overview of the RIT distance education delivery system while allowing optional opportunities to seek additional information.

B. Course Structure
The course is divided into eight lessons covering the major areas of interest expressed by prospective students. Each lesson contains brief explanations about the lesson topic in addition to one or more opportunities to explore the lesson topic or related topics in more detail through extra-credit activities. These extra-credit assignments take the student outside of the mini-course into other RIT web sites, giving the student samples of the distance learning experience, a broader view of the institution and its services for distance learners, or contacts to request additional information. For example, the course gives the student the chance to download and try out FirstClass, the groupware computer conferencing system used by the RIT Office of Distance Learning.

The mini-course concludes with a final mini-exam that includes broad hints on the correct answers, a brief graduation experience, and an opportunity to give the course instructor input on the helpfulness of the mini-course in addressing the prospective distance learner’s questions.

II. THE ALN WORKSHOP EXPERIENCE

The course instructor entered the ALN Workshop, Getting Started with On-line Courses, as a novice in using a web page editor and developing web pages. Although the workshop felt comfortable, even low-key, during the first week, the intensity of the workshop built quickly. The desire to learn became intense for a novice, especially after viewing the web pages of workshop participants who had entered with previous experience. The time commitment then increased dramatically and the learning curve became very steep for the remainder of the workshop.

A. Workshop Structure
The structure of the workshop lent itself well to the diversity of the participants. Those with little or no experience could complete the assignments, while the more experienced had opportunities to use special features or advanced techniques in developing their on-line courses. The workshop covered all the basic topics for putting a course on-line. The administration of the workshop, however, was flexible. This flexibility was important for the variety of online courses under development by workshop participants. The Distance Learning 101's course instructor was able to learn, therefore, about structuring a course conference during the workshop, although this component was not appropriate for the mini-course being developed.

B. After the Workshop
Once the workshop was completed, the developing on-line course needed to be relocated from the workshop server to the home institution server. For those whose home institutions have servers that support the web editor used in the workshop (FrontPage), few problems, if any, in continuing to develop and use the on-line course would be anticipated. The mini-course instructor was not one of those having this good fortune, so adjustments needed to be made to the mini-course for all features to work off the RIT server. These adjustments were not burdensome, however, and lack of server compatibility should not deter others from considering taking the workshop.