There’s no space to talk about: Student voices for online course design

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Session Description

Online interaction not only includes student-student interaction but also includes student-content, student-instructor, and student-system interaction. These four types of interaction need to be considered when designing online courses. We interviewed 27 graduate students and investigated how their level of participation and interaction were related to online course design in terms of curriculum and content, course structure and technology support, instructor communication, and online activities such as online discussion and group projects. Participants shared  their recommendations about course design factors during the interview. These participants included 11 international students and 10 domestic students. Various nationalities and ethnicities were purposefully sampled to hear about diverse student voices. Many of these participants said course structure and teacher presence were very important. They believed that students would engage more and respect diverse perspectives if instructors care about diversity and inclusion. They also believed that no teacher presence means “confusion” and “feeling unsupported” in online space. Instructors’ regular  communication through various channels, proper accommodation based on students’ needs, explicit guidelines or encouragement to include diverse learners, and timely support and help were greatly valued by online learners.

Presenter(s)

Hajeen Choi
Florida State University

Hajeen Choi is a doctoral candidate in Instructional Systems and Learning Technologies program at Florida State University. Her research interests include motivation and engagement in online learning, lurking, othering, networked learning, and social media in education. Currently, she is working on the projects such as the feeling of othering in online learning, lurking in online learning, Twitter Conference Backchannel for building PLN and online presence, and network analysis in education. In regards to teaching, she teaches an educational technology course to pre-service teachers and had been working as a teaching assistant for various online courses. She may be contacted at hc16b@my.fsu.edu.

Ömer Arslan
Florida State University

Ömer Arslan is a third-year doctoral student in Instructional Systems and Learning Technologies program at Florida State University. He is interested in online course design and facilitation, particularly how instructors design and facilitate course activities in online classrooms. Currently, he engages in activities that contribute to his personal and professional development including but not limited with enrolling in graduate courses, teaching Introduction to Educational Technology, participating in research projects, and research group meetings. He may be contacted at oa18h@my.fsu.edu.

Dan He
Florida State University

Dan He is a second-year doctoral student in Instructional Systems & Learning Technologies program at Florida State University. Her current research interests include using social media for formal and informal learning, online course designs, and culturally responsive teaching. She is currently involved in research projects related to students’ feeling of othering in online environments and K-12 teachers’ preparedness of online teaching. Dan is dedicated to creating and fostering inclusive and equitable digital learning environments.

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