Before Peter Carr came to Waterloo, he ran the online MBA program at Athabasca University for seven years. Unlike the “traditional” teaching trajectory, Peter moved from online teaching into the classroom, and took his experience teaching online with him.
The domain of online learning has changed a lot since Peter first started teaching online, as he says “there are way more things we can do now…[we’ve] learned a lot since then". Initially, Peter thought that online learning was the distance learning of the past: students independently reading on a computer screen and not interacting with anyone else. This is not the case anymore. Today, he notes, online courses offer rich opportunities for active, engaging, and collaborative learning.
Peter’s first experience with an online course was just before starting at Athabasca University. He previewed an online course, which allowed him to see what students were doing in the online context. The most interesting part for him was being able to see what students were learning, and getting feedback about the impact of what is being taught. He quickly saw that this was a great way to teach because of the continuous feedback that instructors get from their students. Peter found it easier to improve as an instructor with the rich feedback that comes naturally through observing what students are discussing with each other.
In Peter’s experience, students are more motivated when they know that the instructor is engaged with the course, and their learning. To maintain his presence online, Peter has a weekly seminar to go over what happened in the class. He also gives specific individual feedback on weekly assignments so that students know that he’s present and isn’t simply using generic feedback.
Motivating students is about more than showing that you’re engaged as an instructor. Course design, notes Peter, is an important element for generating motivation in students. He creates challenging course activities to get students excited and interested in the course, and builds a sharing component into the course structure by requiring his students to share proposals, presentations, and reports with their peers.
In a similar vein, motivating students to interact with each other is essential in an online course. Peter promotes this by introducing his students to collaborative activities such as peer review, open-ended discussion, and assignments that require a collective output.
Peter said that the ability to get to know students online well and engage with them is more rewarding than in a typical face-to-face class. He also revels in the amount, and variety, of technological tools available in online courses. Peter states that “…we’re only at the beginning of the impact that technology is going to have on education…I think that’s very exciting.” According to Peter, if you like teaching in the classroom, then you’re definitely going to like it even more online.