SNRAS offers web-based course

Associate Professor Susan Todd (pictured at right) is blazing new trails for SNRAS, offering the school’s first web-based course.

Todd has been teaching the Natural Resources Management 101 course, “Resource Conservation and Policy,” for fourteen years in the traditional classroom setting. “It’s intriguing to find out what it is like to teach an online course,” she said. “The whole concept was new to me.”

She geared up by starting the summer taking an iTeach course at the Center for Distance Education. “They gave me fabulous online tools.”

At first Todd was a little suspicious of online courses, fearing that they were all about bells and whistles and not about substance, but in the past month she has become a convert.

While there is no set time for class and no location to convene (except cyberspace) the course is well organized and going well. Students have weekly deadlines to meet.

The class began with fourteen students and six remain. “It looks like the remaining students are all going to finish,” she said. The class ranges from Fairbanks to Homer and even to Missouri.

One challenge has been trying to get to know the students a little better. With students from the classroom there is a certain familiarity. “I see them ten years later in the grocery store and ask them about their careers and families.” But with the online students, there could be almost no interaction. “I know that body language is important but they’re not getting that from me and vice versa,” she said. To help get acquainted with the online students, Todd asked them to each prepare a home page in Blackboard and include a picture. “I want to think of each of them as a person.”

Something new she is trying with the online course that she really likes is requesting weekly feedback from her students. “They tell me what they like and what needs improvement each week. It’s quick and it’s more detailed than end-of-the-semester evaluations,” she said.

Testing is done online, with students being proctored, and most of the grading is done automatically (except for open-ended questions).

Meanwhile, Todd is building up a huge database of coursework, tests, PDFs, assignments, and readings in Blackboard.

One difference from the classroom course is that students are required to write more essays and post them to the class blog. “I’m hoping this raises the quality because it opens their work to the whole world and their peers.” She has been duly impressed with the writing and lesson plans the students have prepared. “It’s summertime and it’s beautiful out and they are still doing this; that’s pretty dedicated.”

Todd will continue to offer the web-based course as well as her classroom sessions. “It will be interesting to see if the face to face classes get smaller as a result of having this new option open,” she said.

All in all, Todd has been pleased with this first run at online teaching, which fits her profile because she has never been afraid of professional challenges. “I love trying new software,” she said. “That adds a lot of fun to the course.”