13th Annual E-Learn 2008

I attended the 13th Annual E-Learn 2008 World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education in Las Vegas. The reason I decided to attend the conference was my first online I teach this semester. Since this is the first time I teach any online course, I have had some difficulties in that class. Being a quant-oriented course wouldn't help me either.

While it was a great experience to see how others approach online courses, I was not able to find exact answers I was looking for. However, one thing is for sure in that online teaching may or will be the major part of higher education. For example, the State of Minnesota mendates 25% of courses to be provided online by 2015, and we know the UNC Tomorrow wants to increase online courses as much as 60% (if my memory is correct). As one of Keynote spear, Mark David Milliron, said, the "Next Generation" rely on cell phones & instant messages to communicate, build online communities, and spend much more time online, as much as 12.2 hours per week. As a faculty, I need to deal with future, or some current students who are so used to technology.

After attending several sessions, however, I realized Winston-Salem State University is way behind other institutions in terms of E-Learning. At the same time, I face a dilemma as a faculty whose job is research, teaching, and services. Even at a teaching-oriented university, research cannot be ignored since the productivity in research will dictate your marketability. In my experience, online teaching requires a huge commitment from faculty and can be really time-consuming at the expense of research. However, once a course is fully developed, I can see next time will be much easier, evidenced by the University of Pheonix.

As a closing remark, we live in a world where technology evolves in such a fast pace and the next generation will rely on new technology. In business, once a company, for example the Big 3, is behind innovation, it is very difficult to overcome the technology gap and to remain competitive. While I am not a big fan of online teaching, especially for my course, we must keep working on development so that we are not behind our peers.

JSK