Nov. 14, 2006 issue
When I moved to Michigan from Ohio, I received two faculty offers in
the area: EMU and the other school down the road. My decision to teach
at EMU wasn't hard; I really liked what I saw here. The faculty's first
job is teaching and the student is the focus. Students don't get ignored
because a professor is too busy trying to get a paper published.
I've been teaching online classes at EMU for 10 years. EMU has the only
dietetics program in the country that is fully online for
both graduate and undergraduate degrees. It's really great to be a part
of it. I have students from all over the country, and from Guam. We discuss
how nutrition practices differ across the country. For example, the multicultural
population in California has different needs from the elderly population
in Florida. In the classroom setting, where most students are from the
same area and you only have a 50-minute block of time, these kinds of
discussions are much harder. Whereas, in the online environment, everyone
participates and the discussion occurs over several days.
I really enjoy teaching online courses. My classroom can be anywhere:
outside in the sunshine or in my hotel room if I'm away at a professional
meeting. I'm currently working with the Faculty Development Center to
help other faculty see how technology can enhance their teaching. It's
not something to be afraid of. One of our current projects involves teaching
faculty how to use Podcasting as an instructional method.
Professors often express concerns about online courses because you don't
get to meet the students personally. But, faculty often do not have the
opportunity to get to know every student in their courses unless they
are very small. Online courses enable the professor to communicate with
each student. Instead of remembering them by their face, I remember them
by the way they write and the types of learning styles they have. Teaching
online courses has made me a better professor. I hope to show the rest
of academia that online education is here to stay and is an exciting way
to teach.
