Knowing your online students

Ko and Rossen introduce an interesting point when they discuss the scheduling of online courses. I read with trepidation the line, "think in terms of subdivisions of two- or three-day spreads" (p. 74). I haven't seen many assignments that require such a quick turn-around in my online classes, but when I do, I'm frantic trying to keep up. Ko and Rossen go on to admonish online teachers to keep scheduling flexible to allow for busy work schedules, time zone differences, and computer accessibility issues. I've posted before that there are merits to keeping a weekly or bi-weekly schedule, so students can collaborate or interact while learning the same things at the same times. That said, though, I also think assignments shouldn't be scheduled too close together to allow for short-term flexibility when determining when during the week or two weeks to complete the assignments.

The Center for Teaching Effectiveness outlines the essential elements for an online course syllabus (http://cte.udel.edu/syllabus.htm) that is an interesting comparison to the checklist included in Ko and Rossen (p. 75-76). Both lists include the importance of due dates. The next step in my personal research will be my curiosity with what the best practices are for online assignment due dates.