Dr. Pei-Chun Hsieh and joerdis
The Teaching Centre in a conversation with Dr. Pei-Chun Hsieh, Assistant Professor in the Therapeutic Recreation program, on the pros and cons of teaching in the classroom and online.
TC: What motivates you to design and teach courses online?
Developing and teaching online courses is one part of my teaching assignment as Assistant Professor in the Therapeutic Recreation program. Our main intention in teaching parts of the program online is to reach more of our local and national students, but we have also had a lot of requests from potential students abroad, whom we would like to cater to in the nearer future as well. Our program is still relatively new as we are entering our fourth year. Since I started teaching at the U of L, I have taught courses in both modalities. That made evident to me quickly that I need to apply different strategies to engage students in both environments.
TC: Can you elaborate on the differences between in-class and online environments?
One major difference was the perception of and engagement in the group project that I designed for both course sections. Peer learning, in my view, can be a special avenue for students to close knowledge gaps and connect with others over common issues. However, in my online class, students were very resistant to group work. My motivation to design that group activity was to help establish a sense of community or cohort in the online environment. We do that on campus where group projects are a very successful way for students to work with each other and learn together. Out of the eight groups in the online course I taught last fall, only two groups reported that they really enjoyed the group project. The people in those two groups lived in the same cities, and so they got to actually meet each other to discuss their projects in person. Meanwhile the other six groups had trouble connecting with their peers, and they also struggled with time management issues.
I was surprised to have my assumption challenged because many of my students needed extra support in using basic communication tools and online resources. I still believe that collaboration, teamwork and leadership are very crucial for health care providers in the 21st century and would like to explore different ways to engage online students in group work.
TC: What kind of feedback did you get from the students in your online course?
Despite the mixed experiences, the overall student feedback was good. Apparently, most student valued the learning that had taken place as well as the rationales I had provided them with why we were doing specific class activities a certain way. On the flip side, a few students were saying that they hadn’t been prepared for the academic rigour in my course. That isn’t necessarily a negative comment, but it made me realize that students had clearly misunderstood what effort and time is involved in taking a 3-credit course. Some students were mistaken to think they only neede