Sandro's Online College Experience Video

Sandro Tuccinardi - IT Professor
Learn how three components of online learning help this professor's students excel.

Video Transcript

You've got more of a flexible schedule. You're doing the work when it's right for you and when you're in the right frame of mind. And, you have access to your professors pretty much 24-7, as opposed to meeting once a week and asking your questions then. Here it's a totally different type of learning paradigm. You can actually be doing your work, get stuck, which people will get stuck in a programming course, and you can email your instructor and get a response within 24 hours. At least they can pick up and go throughout the week and get their assignments on time. I think that's by far the biggest advantage of online education because there are a couple of different avenues. If they email me and I can't address their issues, we can meet in an online messenger, so we're talking to one another at the same time. If that doesn't work, we'll chat on the phone and make sure we solve the problem.

Online learning has three main components students should know about. The first one is the discussion boards or discussion threads in which students go on. I'll pose an initial question at the beginning of the week and then they'll respond back and other students will respond to them so it's basically a thread that goes throughout the week. They kind of can research their responses and then they can post them, so there is a lot of knowledge that goes back and forth.

The second component is the synchronous chat in which we'll meet at for example wed evening at 8:00. Everybody's there and I can answer student questions about assignments and they can ask each other some question. That's real time.

And then finally there are assignments. They've got an assignment each week and they've got to complete their project and that's really the main focus and on the discussion boards and in the chat area we'll be discussing issues about the assignment and how they can approach it and what difficulties they are having.

We are a community we are real people. Often times I'll chat with people on the phone so they know I'm a real instructor they can reach me anytime that's the biggest challenge it can be easily overcome really within the first couple of weeks. By the end of it, people have made friendships and more importantly business connections.