Reflection week 3

What is the greatest challenge that I have encountered as an online teacher/facilitator and how did I manage it? (If you have not yet taught online what do you think would be the greatest challenge for online teachers/facilitators?).
My greatest challenge as an online teacher is making the personal connections with students. To simplify, I have three types of students.
1. Will succeed regardless of what I do.
2. Will succeed with my assistance and perseverance.
3. Will no work enough to succeed regardless of what I do.

I do recognize I have an impact on the # 1 and # 3 groups just not enough to determine their success as measured by whether they pass or fail my class.

Group # 2 is where I feel I have or could have the most impact. If these students are supported, encouraged and given just the right combination of support they can be successful. The difficulty as I see it is each need as unique combination of support, feedback, engagement and communication from the teacher. It is easy to identify the needs of some as they are self advocating. Others present unique challenges that online teaching makes more difficult as there is less interaction in some cases.

I try to open lines of communication and create a open door atmosphere so that students can feel supported. Tools learned in this program and innovation by our staff have been helpful in reaching this second group.

Some things that I feel are really important to consider about synchronous and asynchronous facilitation as I prepare to facilitate my threaded and web conference discussions are. . .
Try to engage students and recognize that the audience for this presentation has a ton of expertise in the field of education.

I choose my particular discussion topic because . . .
One thing that I thought about when developing rubrics for the 2 different discussions is. .

I used the rubric the science department developed for discussion boards at iQ.
I choose to ask the question concerning the perceived importance of socialization in face to face as compared to the online environment because it seemed an issue that has advocates on each side.