Online courses are frequently categorized into three types: enhanced, hybrid, and fully online.
Enhanced Courses include course-related materials only.
For traditional on-campus courses that will continue to meet for all
scheduled class times, faculty will frequently put the syllabus, class
notes, and required student assignments online. They may also supply
web links to other resources. This information is typically for student
viewing purposes only and there is no requirement for the student to
access these materials.
Hybrid Courses provide online activities as a means for reducing seat time.
With the increase in students, decrease in funding, and difficulty with
scheduling classroom space, many on-campus courses are reducing
seat-time requirements and freeing up classroom space by implementing
discussions, tests, readings, or tutorials as part of the course
requirements. These activities are interactively pursued by students to
both enhance and complete all requirements of a traditional class. For
example, instead of the instructor lecturing and facilitating in-class
discussions for two days and then having a lab on the third day, the
instructor may put all lecture materials and required discussion
interactions online. Thus, requiring students to physically be on
campus only one day per week for the lab section. This DOES NOT reduce
the students study requirements or the rigor of the class. Students
meet the remaining course objectives by reading textbook and online
materials, participating in online discussions and completing some
assessments online.
In Fully Online Courses, students are not required to come to campus.
Traditionally, a fully online course is a course offered entirely over
the Internet. The faculty and students may never meet face-to-face. At
Portland State we also define courses on “fully online†even if there
is a requirement for up to three class meetings in a single term.
However, anything beyond three meetings would be considered a hybrid or
enhanced course. In a fully online course all course requirements for
reading, discussion, homework, and assessment are conducted online.
What technical expertise do I need to teach online?Before teaching a course online, you should be comfortable performing the following tasks on your computer:
Accessing the Internet and using a web browser.
Creating and editing documents in a word processing program such
as Microsoft Word.
Copying and pasting text from one document to another.
Receiving and sending emails with attachments.
Downloading and opening attached files.
If
you can do these things, learning the other tools provided in WebCT
will be an easy extension for you. For example, the Discussion Board
works similarly to e-mail. The Chat Room only requires the ability to
type and press ENTER. You can create content with your word processor
and load them into WebCT. Furthermore, the Distributed Education staff
can help you to get your course set up and populated with content so
that you don’t need to worry about the additional technical
requirements of building a course.
