Kevin E. Johnson

Some instructors describe discussion as the heart and soul of online learning. For academic courses that require participation, there’s little doubt that discussion is a cornerstone. In this article, we look at why discussion is important, how discussions are organized, and how you can determine what’s expected of you to succeed in online discussions.

Think back to middle school (if it isn’t too painful to remember those days!). Did you ever complete a homework assignment and forget to take it to school and turn it in? The same thing can happen online; you do the work and forget to submit it. In this article, we review several methods for getting your homework to the instructor.

As you find out in the following discussion, you can use quite a few web-based tools to collaborate and communicate with your online learning group. These tools are often external to your learning management system. Many of these tools are free for public use. The key is to either use tools that are simple to learn or use only tools that every member of the group is already familiar with.

In a robust online course, you can expect to see communication occurring on several different levels. Messages are directed toward the class as a whole from the instructor, individually from the instructor to single learners (and from learners to the instructor), and from learner to learner. If you were to visually plot that network of messages, a good course would look messy because there would be so many connections between learners.

There’s no easy way to break the news: School isn’t cheap. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, annual tuition in current dollars for two-year institutions increased from $3,367 for the 1985–1986 school year to $10,598 for the 2016–2017 academic year. © SkazovD / Shutterstock.comIt’s impossible for us to tell you that a two-year degree, for example, will cost you $15,000 because we don’t know whether you want to attend a private college, a four-year institution that awards associate’s degrees, or a two-year school.

Online learning is using the internet to learn. It is about connecting the learner to educational materials by way of the internet. Online learning can happen in a variety of forms and fashions, but the underlying use of the internet and its technologies are fundamental. Lessons, communication, and assessment (grading) all happen by way of the internet.

What makes online education unique for younger learners? After all, it can’t be the same as online education for college students, can it? In the next few sections, we consider safety issues, extra parental involvement, synchronous meetings, and the need to work offline. Safety concerns with children We won’t kid you: Having children learn online is a reason for parents and guardians to be concerned about their safety.

Assistive technology is the term used to describe tools that help people complete daily tasks. For example, the spell check feature on your word processing program is considered an assistive technology. It helps people write faster by automatically correcting most misspelled words and highlighting those it doesn’t know.

In this article, we give you some practical advice on what we consider best practice when it comes to being an online learner. We throw in that self-care angle because you’re making an investment in yourself, so show yourself some love! © Fabio Principe / Shutterstock.com Treat learning like it’s a job Learning is work!