EDUCATOR’S CORNER
Best Practices in Online Learning
Rasoul Sorkhabi, Ph.D., CPG-11981
Dr. Rasoul Sorkhabi is a professor at the University of Utah’s Energy & Geoscience Institute, Salt Lake City. Email:
rsorkhabi@egi.utah.edu
In response to the 2020 pandemic, universities, colleges, and schools have largely incorporated digital tools and web-based platforms in their educational formats. For instance, the University of Utah (where I have worked for the past 18 years) have classified their courses into five types:
(1) In-person courses: Traditional, class-based, fully in- person classes with a scheduled room and meeting time.
(2) Online courses: Classes conducted primarily online, through Canvas.
(3) Hybrid courses: Classes that blend same-time in-person meeting and flexible online instructions.
(4) Interactive video classes (IVC): Fully digital classes that use same-time delivery using web video technology (such as Google Meet, Skype, Zoom, etc.)
(5) IVC-hybrid: A mixture of in-person and same-time interactive video classes.
Even before the pandemic, Canvas was an important part of in-person classes (for sharing lecture notes and other educa- tional materials with students, posting grades, and so forth). Nevertheless, the 2020 pandemic has surged online meetings and web-based classes. It is expected that even after the pan- demic these digital tools, now that they are tested and estab- lished, will be increasingly used. What are the best practices in online learning (or e-learning)? How to optimize web-based techs and procedures to maximize learning outcome? These questions not only face colleges but also face students who spend enormous sums of money (and time) on their education. This article briefly explores these issues.
One particular difficulty in assessing “online” education is that its definition is somewhat vague (Figure 1 below). Traditional in-person classes, because they have developed over centuries, have a clear definition; they are fixed-place, fixed-time (synchronous), and interactive. However, online or web-based education potentially includes a wide range of tools and procedures, some of which may not be accessible
Figure 1. 40 TPG •
Jan.Feb.Mar 2021
www.aipg.org
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