A Thousand Years in Thirty Virtual Days: Summer Online Courses and the Sophomore Survey
The Pre-Module
Early on we recognized that covering 15 modules in 5 weeks would be difficult enough without losing time up front to syllabi discussions and technical difficulties. ACU's program has developed two or three sophomore-level courses a year targeted at first and second-year students, many taking their first summer courses. In our first 5 sections of Major British Writers, 51% of students enrolled were Freshman and 26% were Sophomores (compare this with a larger summer program at James Madison University with dozens of course offerings where only 4% Freshman and 19% Sophomores [Alberico & Mazoué, 2004]). Together with the course designers, technology support staff developed a pre-module that every summer online student had to complete before being officially enrolled.
In addition to testing technical proficiency and hardware compatibility, the pre-module introduced students to several foundational assumptions behind distance learning. This is an essential step in helping students understand their commitment up front, as Palloff and Pratt note: "Be clear about how much time the course will require of students and faculty in order to eliminate potential misunderstandings about course demands. Students sometimes assume that taking an online course is the softer, easier way to earn credit. They learn quickly, however, that this is not the case" (Palloff & Pratt, 2001, p. 30). Clarifying expectations is doubly important for abbreviated summer online courses. Though few of our students came with summer school experience, several brought their own preconceptions about distance learning. As one commented in her final portfolio, "I have been involved in three other online courses from a different college and they did not even come close to comparing with this English course from ACU. The others were extremely simple, and though they counted for both college and high school credit, the workload was rather small. There were not near as many assignments due, and the grading system was definitely not as difficult." As more and more students enter college with a variety of online education experiences, course designers and instructors must be more purposeful from the beginning in establishing clear expectations for their courses.
During this pre-module, students also moved through a typical assignment cycle where they were introduced to the course syllabus, completed a web exercise, and posted to the discussion board for the first time. Before Beowulf's first boast, students were reading about academic expectations, successfully contributing to the discussion boards, and beginning to build a fledgling online community. As important as downloading plug-ins and learning discussion board etiquette might be, the greatest benefit of the pre-module was in setting realistic student expectations about work load and time management. We learned that clarifying the level of time commitment can not begin too early. Another 5-week student commented, "I didn't think that it would be very difficult and I felt that I would probably be able to breeze through the assignments given without any problem. I found out after completing Module 0 that I was completely wrong in this assumption." The importance of completing this step before the first "class meeting" can hardly be overstated, and once developed this material can be reworked easily to fit the needs of later designers and summer online courses.