MAKING TECHNOLOGY HUMAN: REAL TIME INTERACTIONS IN ONLINE LEARNING

Abstract

As online education becomes more and more ubiquitous in higher education, instructors are constantly seeking new ways to improve online teaching. Much has been done to increase the effective use of Learning Management Systems and to use student digital footprints to predict learning outcomes, however, prominent teaching strategies such as interpersonal interactions and immediate feedbacks that are common in brick and mortar classrooms are minimized in online learning or replaced by email communications and message board postings. Online education is gradually becoming technology-centered rather than human centered and lack of instructor intervention is still the number one disadvantage of online education. This paper proposes a virtual classroom approach that brings human interactions into online learning. It maximizes the opportunity students can interact with instructor and their peers, and effectively integrates traditional classroom teaching techniques with digital materials. The paper explains how traditional techniques can be adjusted to suit online teaching, and how to help students gain a sense of community, a strong human bond and a rich classroom experience in a virtual learning environment. Course evaluation result shows that student satisfaction rate from the trial class increased significantly over the average of previous semesters.