Tutorials

Thus far in this course I have participated in a multiple online tutorials with the goal of enhancing my teaching presence in my online courses.  Having been one of the few lone Facebook hold outs and unfamiliar with Second Life, the tutorials have presented me with some new and interesting information although I am not certain how or if I will use these programs in my online classes.  For me, Facebook does not present many opportunities that I cannot find in my learning management system so I am not inclined to use it despite understanding it better now.  I see the potential for using it to make an individual participant more “real”, which is certainly essential to the successful online course, as supported by the literature (Dixon, 2010, Plaoff and Pratt, 2007 and Larreamendy-Joerns & Leinhardt, 2006), however I believe there are other ways to do so better suited to my course needs. 

As for Second Life, I had never heard of this program (who knew NCSU had so many “islands”).  After watching the tutorial and completing the readings for this week, I am not more inclined to use this program.  I understand that it allows students to interact more and perhaps more personally online and that it allows them to “be anyone they want to be” (tutorial, nd) and to be anywhere they want to be.  As Warbuton (2009) stated, “this approach is one that facilitates an unprecedented openness” (p. 418) from which we can conclude that Second Life open’s doors to student participation and engagement.  However I am unclear as to what value it has in actually teaching materials for a discipline such as Sociology.  I can see that transporting your students to ancient Greece or a world class museum may be useful in certain courses, but for mine, I think the best Second Life could do is provide a social space for students and perhaps the instructor.  While the importance of presence is important, I think finding ways that increase presence and create authentic learning opportunities should be paramount for the online instructor. 

 In addition, according to Millheim (n.d) the role on online instructors is “ambiguous” (p.25), requiring them to develop a variety of teaching techniques. Thus it often becomes the responsibility of the online instructor to teach students about the technology as well as the discipline.   While this might be a responsible expectation for the successful online instructor, Second Life seems to require a great deal of technology teaching while providing limited opportunities to teach substantive material.  In the video tutorial, the instructors mention that to use Second Life effectively one must encourage self-sufficiency online.  I find this to be good advice, applicable to many online arenas and tools, but to be the crux of the problem with using Second Life in my teaching (undergraduate Sociology courses).  To encourage this self-sufficiency would take, in my opinion, too much of the class time and could potentially distract from the core concepts and learning objectives of the course.