John Vivolo, New York University, Director of Online and Virtual Learning
Anytime, Anywhere Learning and the Value of Synchronicity
- Even when providing on-demand classes that suit a student’s schedule, there should be online office hours, discussion groups, or other ways to encourage student-to-teacher and student-to-student interactions.
- Faculty are the subject matter experts, but they may benefit from help from instructional designers and technical personnel to design courses.
“We’ve seen data indicating that international students prefer that we output our modules (individual lectures) into HTML5 so that they work on mobile devices because often these students view their lectures on those small screens.”
In more than 13 years of specializing in online education, John Vivolo has seen great advances in the design, delivery, and technology associated with remote learning. He still struggles with a few issues, though. One is the balance between the obvious advantages that time-shifting courses provides to working students versus the proven benefits of direct student to-teacher and student-to-student interaction. Another is that format and technology issues still matter, perhaps even more now that mobile devices are for many students around the world a primary point of access.
This is an excerpt from Expanding Educational Opportunity. The eBook was generously sponsored by Blackboard.
