Virtually Learning

Finalist: best online article or series of articles, Canadian Online Publishing Awards (2011).
“I’d like you to teach an online course for next year on Canadian defence and foreign policy. What do you think?” my department chair said to me last summer.

I was shocked, to say the least.

I’ve been teaching at the Canadian Forces College – a graduate level institution offering professional and academic masters level degrees to intermediate and senior level military personnel and select public servants – for five years. My official titles are associate professor of defence studies (I have a PhD in history, and an MA in international affairs) and deputy director of education. Even though I work for the military, and as a result for the Government of Canada, I have complete academic freedom, and I exercise it regularly.

I can’t say that I initially responded positively to my chair’s request, but he is a team player, and I knew that he wouldn’t have asked me – someone who genuinely enjoys just about every minute in the classroom – to teach online if it wasn’t necessary. It also made sense for the college’s general advisor on pedagogy to have some experience in the online environment.

So I said yes, and I approached University Affairs about blogging about my experience.

This blog is meant to provide for future instructors what I didn’t have: a candid description of how I managed, or attempted to manage, to adjust my teaching methods and style to accommodate the online environment.

I will cover issues like:

• how I prepared to teach online
• the logistics of course planning in the online context
• my first interactions with my 19 students
• some of my many unexpected teaching challenges, and how I dealt with them

I will offer what I hope are some answers, discovered through my successes and failures, and I will also ask questions.

I look forward to your reactions to my posts and the conversations that we might have together.

Visit Virtually Learning now.