University of Maryland visiting assistant professor Helene Cohen of the College of Education is an instructor herself, as well as a researcher on the uses of technology in education. In this guest column, she offers insight on some of the issues related to using virtual classrooms and other online course facilitation tools.

By Helene Cohen, Guest Columnist

The question is still out there. We ask ourselves if online classes are good for universities. Do they detract from the prestige of the institution? Do they undermine our ability to deliver a quality-controlled product? We point to infamous online degrees as substandard, almost joke diplomas. But the truth is, that ship has sailed.

Online classes are ubiquitous, offered by most mainstream institutions, and are quickly growing in popularity. As a matter of fact, more than 20 percent of higher ed students in the U.S. took at least one online course in the fall of 2007 (Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States, 2008, Sloan-C).

The time has passed to debate IF we should offer online classes and programs. Instead, the conversation has shifted: HOW are we going to maximize the potential of this growing phenomenon?

Online courses, whether hybrid or fully online, are growing in popularity among both professors and students. The reasons this is true may appear simple at first glance: There is the anytime/anywhere convenience of stepping directly into the classroom from one’s kitchen, office, or vacation spot. There is the ease of scheduling a meeting without factoring in travel time. Of course, there is the money saved on gas and the elimination of frustrating traffic jams. And finally, there is the growing reality that you may need to attend an online class when you are sick or afraid of catching your neighbor’s flu symptoms.

While all of this is true, there is another compelling reason for the spike in popularity — the ability of the new, interactive virtual spaces to help students and teachers better realize both their instructional and community-building goals.

On the instructional front, virtual spaces can reach out to diverse learners, augment content delivery, enhance creative pedagogy, and encourage the application of learned knowledge in “real life” settings.

Regarding community-building goals, virtual spaces are highly effective venues in which to promote social learning and networking, bringing together learners who have a range of interrelated experiences gleaned in a variety of natural settings.

In the College of Education, a project entitled No Teacher Left Alone is investigating how virtual spaces can support community building among K-12 teachers at different schools who share the same challenges and aspirations, but are separated by miles and busy schedules.

While there are many virtual environments on the market, OIT has chosen Wimba Live Classroom 6.0 and has embedded it directly into the Blackboard-supported ELMS class sites. That means it’s only a few clicks for an instructor to create a virtual room, and then, after a one-time set-up wizard, students can just “walk into” the classroom directly from their class homepage.

These virtual classrooms are equipped with a large number of useful tools that help faculty accomplish their instructional goals, including anonymous polling to check understanding, breakout rooms for small group interactions, hand raising to manage the flow of conversation, a shared white board to encourage collaboration, private messaging for students who need behind-the-scenes interventions, PowerPoint presentations to display content, voice activated webcam video to make interactions more personal, the ability to invite guest lecturers from outside the university to join in the discussion, and archiving for absent students.

A cross-departmental project at the College of Education entitled Expanding the Toolkit is looking at what factors encourage faculty to experiment with new tech solutions like virtual spaces in order to achieve their instructional goals (or discourage them from doing so).

Another surprisingly easy virtual space application allows faculty to schedule office hours, tutorials, and collaborative meetings. Whether these are planned in advance or suggested on the fly, virtual rooms afford instructors the opportunity to have a substantive conversation with students and colleagues who are not “just down the hall.” Unlike a phone call, these meetings are augmented by a white board that everyone can write on as if they were gathered around a wall in your office and application sharing that allows you to review manuscripts, lead a guided tour through a Web site, demonstrate how to submit reports to a performance assessment system, work out equations, or edit student work.

While virtual spaces provide opportunities for enhanced learning, there are also real differences between virtual interactions and face-to-face interactions, and those differences can be challenging. Yet, it’s important to determine whether the differences are just the result of the discomfort that accompanies the adoption of a new paradigm, like the off-balance feeling you get when you first step onto a moving walkway, or whether the specific differences in the virtual classroom represent real pedagogic issues.

The way to distinguish the issues from the passing discomfort is to begin by clearly articulating your instructional goals up front. Once you are clear about your goals, you can determine whether or not the differences between virtual and physical classroom instruction actually present any obstacles to accomplishing those goals. The good news is that, once identified, there are tools in place to creatively address many obstacles.

As instructors individually experiment with this new medium, sharing both our mistakes and accomplishments, we can collectively answer the question: HOW can we harness the power of online learning to deliver substantive and satisfying instruction?