FAYETTEVILLE - The mini-lecture in microeconomics is like Robinson Crusoe meets Survivor, with an opening title sequence featuring dramatic music reminiscent of the latter.
“Two Castaways,” reads text superimposed on a yellowed island map as the video lesson begins.
Interspersed with vivid color photos of island landscapes and preview shots of economics graphics, other phrases flash on screen such as “Trying to Survive” and “Specializing and Trading.”
As the music crescendos to a close, the video’s title, “The Robinson Crusoe Economy: A Tale of the Benefits from Trade,” appears.
Javier Reyes with the University of Arkansas produced the 11-minute lesson for his online “Principles of Microeconomics” class to illustrate a concept not enough of hisstudents grasped the first time he presented it.
These are not your grandfather’s lesson plans. Reyes and other professors are among faculty at UA-Fayetteville who are designing Web-based courses.
Reyes, vice provost for distance education at the university’s Global Campus, uses the video to explain the concept of how productivity affects trade.
In the lesson, Crusoe and his companion Friday determine that, because one excels at fishing and the other at producing coconuts, they should specialize.
But should the trade ratio be three coconuts to one fish, one for one, or something else? The answer follows after numerous graphic slides analyzing “opportunity costs” and factors such as how many hours each man can work and how many units each can produce.
“Crusoe can catch fish faster than Friday can grow coconuts,” Reyes said while demonstrating the university’s learning tools in his office Thursday, so the trade ratio is found to be 1.5 fish for every coconut.
“This is my handwriting,” Reyes said while the mini-lecture played on his iPad as a seemingly invisible hand scrawled a mathematical formula over the graphics.
In the past five years, the number of Fayetteville campus students taking at least one online class has nearly tripled, from 1,228 in 2008 to 3,522 last year, according to the website of Global Campus, the short name for the university’s School of Continuing Education and Academic Outreach.
Global Campus is working to help more UA-Fayetteville professors design courses for the Web, even as the University of Arkansas System is working on a plan to help all of its campuses around the state design such courses with the help of an outside company.
Reyes and other UA-Fayetteville administrators said they await more details from the UA System’s plan before determining how it will affect the Global Campus initiatives.
By Friday, Global Campus plans to introduce a link on its website that will allow prospective students to sort and research online offerings, ask questions, or apply, Reyes said.
FAMILIAR TOOLS, NEW FORUM
Reyes said many of the teaching tools used in online classes have been part of traditional classrooms for some time.
Curt Rom, a Fayetteville campus horticulture professor who has been teaching online for three years, agreed.
“Some of the same things I’m using in online classes I’ve been using in face-to-face classes since the mid-1990s,” said Rom, citing PowerPoint as a chief example.
“So for me, it wasn’t a transition at all,” Rom said. As for his colleagues at the university, “It’s a minority of faculty who have taught online.”
One newer innovation Rom cited is Blackboard Collaborate, an online platformthat allows an instructor to interact with a student through Web-conferencing, using webcams, microphones and tools such as a “Whiteboard” that Reyes demonstrated in his office.
“I can actually share my screen with them,” Reyes said. “They can take control of the Whiteboard if they want to.”
The instructor, student, or both can write, draw or upload text, illustrations or graphics on the Whiteboard, even simultaneously, until the student grasps a concept.
“It really allows them to take their question and put it in front of me,” Reyes said. The Whiteboard images can be saved and stored.
The main course lessons are prerecorded and put online so students can study at their own pace, Reyes and Rom said.
Still, Reyes noted, there are deadlines to complete lessons and homework assignments. Real-time components can be used for things such as virtual “office hours” so students can ask questions one-on-one, or Reyes’ mini-lectures.
Professors concerned about cheating on tests can use an online service calledProctorU, which offers proctors by webcam who monitor students much like proctors in physical classrooms.
TAILORED FOR TEACHING STYLE
UA professors work with instructional designers at Global Campus on the features that best suit their teaching style.
Rom likes to encourage his students to pause the lesson after 20 minutes to take a break, knowing that attention spans can waver at that point. He also favors including videos that pause so he can pop a quiz. If a student hasn’t mastered certain concepts by then, he encourages them to rewind and view again before proceeding.
“People say it can be very impersonal online,” Reyes said. “But it can be very personal if you put the time into it.”
Students tell Rom his personality and teaching style in the real and online realms are “identical,” he said.
“I work diligently in my online classes to interact with my students,” Rom said.
During a real-time session, Rom can divide his computerscreen and put a few students’ faces on there at a time.
He also can break students into small groups, tell them to take 10 minutes to collaborate on an answer and then report back to him. Or, hundreds of students can participate in a chat session simultaneously.
“This generation has been raised in chatrooms and on Facebook,” Rom said. And he’s noticed the online classes are a boost for the self-conscious. Whereas 10 percent of students in a physical classroom tend to raise their hands and ask questions, the number rises to about 60 percent in the online format.
Face-to-face classes may have more spontaneity, Rom said, but online classes give students and professors more flexibility. And it’s much easier for him to track a student’s progress with homework and reading lesson plans when the class is online.
Rom predicted physical classes and online classes are both here to stay.
“Some people are afraid online teaching is going to be the demise of universities, when really it’s just another teaching tool,” Rom said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 15 on 04/21/2013