Reflection on online classroom set-up

Most terms I have one online course so I have experienced a variety of instructors presenting through this medium.

My face-to-face courses have always been good, however, when an online teacher is able to set Moodle up in a way that allows for visual organization as well as interpersonal collaboration, the course takes on unique possibilities, Habermasion in nature, for engagement and learning, in a manner that a face-to-face classroom may not be able to achieve.

Online courses allow for personality and physical presence to be set aside, creating a unique, equitable opportunity for students to interact solely through content and ideas. When the instructor is capable of creating an online "culture of care," the online classroom experience has potential to be transformational beyond the face-to-face. One of the ways I have experienced this, is when the instructor sets Moodle up such that each individual answers the prescribed weekly questions *under there own name* thus allowing fellow students to be able to click on a colleague's comment and respond directly to what they have said in collaboration with other students. This way of communicating in a class mimics a normal conversation even though not in real time.

In contrast, when an instructor sets Moodle up so that everyone's response to a prescribed question appears as a single thread under the question (as Angel  used to do), then it most often becomes a game of *who can respond first* most often letting the heart of the conversation get lost in a long unwieldy disjointed thread. Another thing that happens in this set-up, is that the first person to respond is the one that most will then respond to, and so often the first response is done by the same person.  Others with different ideas have to work in and around that response, at a later time, making it difficult to collaborate with the differing views and the differing topics, as the thread gets more and more unwieldy. It also becomes tedious to have to respond to the same early bird posters on most questions, which is akin to a face-to-face class where the same person is the first to answer every question, in every class.

I beg instructors to realize this -- especially adjunct instructors not used to Moodle.

I strongly urge instructors to move toward the set-up that allows people to respond under their own name with a subject header describing the essence of their response, giving a voice to each individual in a manner that can be heard and given due diligence by class mates. This set-up supports collaboration and equality which is satisfying to both the topic and the people engaging with each other.