Importance of Support Personnel in Online Education

Online Education requires the help of many support personnel to be successful.  From technical support personnel, course designers, administration, to recruiters and enrollment specialists, the range of positions exist to aid and assist online learners and educators in multiple ways.  The importance of support personnel is hard to understate.  According to Zawacki-Richter  (n.d.), “…in comparison with traditional distance education, support in online education is of even greater importance…” He gives the following three reasons why:  Learners in distance education have more responsibility than their face to face counterparts; the skills required to do online learning must be developed; and faculty must have support in the areas of promoting, developing, and implementing online learning.  Below is a list of three support personnel with a description of their responsibilities. 

Intake/Onboarding:  These paraprofessionals work with families and students who are new to online schooling in order to assist them in transitioning to the online environment.  They contact families often in the first two weeks of enrollment.  Their primary responsibility is to oversee and provide support, direction, and guidance to these new families and students.  They oversee completion of critical tasks, answer questions, and provide resources such as tutorials, directions, handbooks and more refer students to other support personnel as necessary.  They intervene when progress isn’t being made in order to help families achieve success.  Once families are ready, they are transitioned to a permanent teacher.

Technical support:  Shamsy (2014) reports that tech support personnel provide assistance with many aspects of technological issues which might arise as a result of the technology itself or the experience/knowledge of the user/student.  In some institutions, individuals have been hired with the sole responsibility to offer tech support to students, teachers, and administration.  In other institutions, tech support may be handled by the teacher or a combination of both tech support personnel and teachers.  She gives advantages and disadvantages of both of these scenarios.  Tech support personnel are invaluable as online learning requires technology to operate.  As Shamsy states, “The Internet and associated hardware and software components are the lifeblood of online learning and serve as the medium for content delivery and communication…in an online course or training program, [technical difficulties] can bring the presentation of information, as well as class interaction and collaboration, to a halt.”  In addition to support personnel, many institutions have created online tutorials for using the specific technology (such as software or a particular Web 2.0 technology) their learners will be using consistently or they provide links to the professionally developed support resourses offered by the makers of the software.

Online Instructional Designers:  These professionals create and design online instruction.  According to a job announcement from Iris Educational Media for an Instructional Designer/E-learning Specialist (2016), they often work with other professionals who have been tasked with designing a course such as content area specialist and media production teams and must have strong knowledge of educational technology such as Sharable Content Object Reference Model or SCORM, which, according to SCORM (2008), is a set of standards that ensures all online learning modules and management systems work with each other.  Chapman and Cantrel (2016) explain that instructional designers base their design on current theory and research so the student will experience better learning.

The above referenced support personnel provide a strong foundation for online educators and learners.  It is critical that their services are available in order to ensure that online learning can be the best that it can be.  According to Zawacki-Richter (n.d), online education is innovative when the technologies are used to explore, communicate, and inform instead of just transmit information.  He explains that because of the rapidly changing technology and the availability of online learning, students have become lifelong learners.  These two components, the continuing advancement of technology coupled with more and more students that life-long learning produces demand support.

References

Chapman, S., & Cantrell, P. (2016). What is an Instructional Designer? Retrieved August 12, 2016, from http://teaching.colostate.edu/tips/tip.cfm?tipid=70

Instructional Designer/E-learning Specialist. (2016, August). Retrieved August 12, 2016, from https://www.irised.com/pages/instructional-designer-e-learning-specialist

Online Distance Education [PDF]. Oldenburg, Germany: Carl von Ossietsky University

SCORM Explained. (2008). Retrieved August 12, 2016, from http://scorm.com/scorm-explained/

Shamsy, J. (2014, May). Elearn Magazine: A Balancing Act Part I: Technical Support and the Online Instructor. Retrieved August 11, 2016, from http://elearnmag.acm.org/archive.cfm?aid=2627756#1

Zawacki-Richter, O. (n.d.). The Growing Importance of Support for Learners and Faculty in 

Management of Student Participation in Online Learning

Online teachers encounter several issues in classroom management.  Among them is student participation.  Student participation involves their interaction with the content, with each other and with the teacher.  First, online students complete their study and work in their own environment away from the eyes of the teacher.  How do teachers verify whether or not students are actually reading the content and doing their own work?    Second, online students are usually required to write posts to discussion forums to engage them with other learners.  Teachers often report two problems with student participation in this area:  the posts are not often enough and/or they are not deep enough to address the prompt.  Third, students are often expected to interact with the teacher via online class sessions, telephone conferences, and electronic communications.  Students or parents may want to avoid these interactions or they may not be forthcoming in their communication.

Teachers can be proactive in addressing student participation concerns by doing things before class begins and throughout the duration of the course that will improve student participation.  First, set up expectations and guidelines from the beginning of class.  Be sure those expectations are clearly communicated and what the consequences of not following those expectations will be.  The expectations should include technology requirements so students will be well prepared to meet them.  Be sure to include how non-participation or low participation in all its forms mentioned above will affect grades.  Teachers should monitor and address any issues they find as they find them.  To ensure students participate in the coursework, the coursework should be engaging and high quality and accessible to all students.  For example, it should address many learning styles, provide resources for enrichment and remediation, and be standards based.  It should ask them to complete tasks that are meaningful and well designed.  When problems do arise, teachers should investigate to determine what the problem is and address those issues.  Depending on the situation, the course management system may provide teachers with data on student usage and time on task.  Time logs kept by parents or students report time spent on task.  Both sets of data will help teachers identify students that are not actively participating.  Otherwise, teachers will need to infer student participation based on student work.  High quality work usually indicates students are participating.  Low quality work may be an indicator that students aren’t participating.  Teachers will need to investigate to determine the cause of low quality work.  This involves contacting the student and parent to discuss the issue and uncover the problem.  It may be a technical issue or something else.  Teachers can attempt to help students with technical issues, refer them to support personnel, and reiterate policies and procedures regarding these issues.  If it happens to be something else such as a student needing extra support, students can be assigned to tutoring sessions or other resources to assist them.  Otherwise, it may be personal issues in the home such as sickness or a loss.  Teachers can deal with those issues based on school policy and procedure and a willingness to care and support students.  When an issue arises over whether a student is doing their own work or not, teachers should contact the student and parent and discuss this.  If evidence indicates the student isn’t doing their own work, the student and parent will need to be reminded of school policy and procedure and a consequence issued.  As far as students not participating in discussion forums, Morrison (2012) found three reasons adult students don’t participate:  “poor timing of due dates, reticent students, and student posts that are shallow/lack depth”.  The last two things, I think, apply to younger students as well.  She suggests things teachers can do to alleviate these problems.  For the reticent student, make smaller discussion groups of four or five students, create facilitation teams of two or three students to act as moderators who guide and encourage students, and contact the student via email to offer support and encouragement.  Ko & Rossen (2010) suggest being sure to make the participation required and graded and to create rubrics for the quality and quantity of discussion posts.  Students should understand how many posts or responses they must do and the required depth of their response.  Thormann (2014) recommends that teachers model participation.    As for the third concern, interaction with the teacher, Zacharis (2009) suggest several steps teachers can take:

·         “List contact information on the syllabus

·         Set up communication guidelines and expectations

·         Provide office hours in person or virtually using instant messenger tools or chat rooms

·         Set up a weekly optional chat for students

·         Provide prompt and detailed feedback on assessments and discussion responses

·         Call students to clear up misunderstandings

·         Make frequent announcements to the class”

References:

Morrision, D. (2012, September 03). 3 Reasons Students Don't Participate in Online Discussions. Retrieved August 06, 2016, from https://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/3-reasons-why-students-dont-participate-in-online-discussions/

Thormann, J. (2014, April 08). Encouraging Online Learner Participation. Retrieved August 06, 2016 from http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/asynchronous-learning-and-trends/encouraging-online-learner-participation/

Zacharis, N. “Fostering Students’ Participation In Online Environments: Focus On Interaction, Communication And Problem Solving” Journal of College Teaching & Learning 6.2 (2009): 25-34. http://www.cluteinstitute.com/ojs/index.php/TLC/article/viewFile/1169/1153