Living Online

Professor Paul Lester's evening Communications 300 class meets every Monday and Wednesday at 7 p.m. Students attend class at California State University, Fullerton and sit in on lectures. "It's a bit different," says Lester.

The thing is, Lester's class isn't just a bit different, it is virtual. This online class utilizes a hybrid between Blackboard, a course management system, and Second Life, a virtual simulator game that parallels to our real world. This is an example of how technology is changing today's classrooms. College instructors are creating more courses that include greater technology enhancements.

Second Life is Linux-based and open source, meaning it is experimental software that is openly contributed by the public. Which means, in effect, the program, user, and experience of using the program is constantly changing. This is a truth that is shared with all of today's online experiences.

Linden Labs, the main developer of Second Life, attempts to integrate its product into life, transforming Second Life into a portal for living. Linden sells virtual property that consumers can buy.

"CSUF bought us an island," Lester explains. "They came to me and simply said 'use it.' So I put our online class on Second Life."

Lester makes virtual lesson plans for his class everyday. "There's a virtual slide presentation and lecture that we do weekly. It is mirrored on Blackboard, so students can have the transcripts of our discussion."

This technology is based on reality, Lester explains. "[Second Life] is a real place, with a version of my real office with my actual online office hours," Lester says. "[Other real places] include the Harvard campus [and the] virtual bank accounts of linden dollars, which can be exchanged into real money."

Lester's attempt at a virtual world is an extreme example of a distance-learning program. Fullerton College is attempting to make a similar extension of its campus for teachers online. For fall 2007, FC had 85 sections of wholly online classes, 19 hybrid classes, and 2 Teleweb classes, most of which use FC's WebCT service.

Carol Mattson, Dean of Academic Services and a former online teacher, is eager about FC's online technology growth. "You don't physically have to be here," Mattson says. "You don't have to deal with parking issues, you don't have to worry about a certain time of the day or a certain day of the week. There's usually a flexibility that you couldn't get in a face to face class." "It's almost impossible for someone working 48 hours a week to find a full time schedule in a face to face class, especially as they get closer to graduating- there's a convenience factor." Mattson promises there is no loss in classroom quality, that online classes are just as good with technology.

"For example, our Spanish faculty is using audio [in its online courses]. Students literally speak Spanish into a recorder, which creates a digital file that the teacher listens to and critiques. The students are still listening, still speaking." Online Spanish Instructor Rosa Arceo uses WebCT as well as another course management system, Moodle, with a plugin called MoodleSpeex, another experimental open-source, Linux-based software for her courses at FC.

"It's threaded audio discussion," Arceo explains. "Students speak into a microphone and post it. The students can listen and respond to each other. It worked really well for us until it just stopped working a while ago."

Despite the lack of threaded audio, Arceo has other multimedia to use in her two highly developed and multimedia-rich courses, Spanish 201 and Spanish 203. She has made flash games, slide shows, and flash animations with audio recordings of herself. "I believe that learning a language is like learning how to play the guitar," Arceo explains. "You aren't here to hug the guitar, you're here to play the guitar, and to be good at guitar you have to practice. That face-to-face practice is lost, so online we try to make up for it."

Arceo says she sympathizes for students that must take online classes, for the single mothers and full-time workers, noting that she is lucky enough to have family to watch her child, or else she would be like many online students, forced to work from home.

"If you are blessed enough to have the ability to come in to class," Arceo says, "come on in. It is better on you and easier on the teacher."

Arceo says she taught herself about the technology, learning of her tools through "word of mouth" from friends and fellow faculty.

"I love using what I find," Arceo says. "I just wish I had more time to implement it all."

She mentions her temptation over Wimba, an advanced plugin for course management systems like WebCT, Blackboard, and Moodle, integrating audio, video, instant messaging and podcasting.

"I only use things that are free," Arceo says. "If we could afford it, we'd use Wimba, what other schools use, but it is very expensive compared to what we use now."

Every one of Arceo's online students is required to submit audio and engage in the online discussion, she says, meaning everyone talks, whereas in a normal class just some speak. Every student gets "more attention" but it is "far more time consuming."

Mattson, however, says that online classes are designed to be exactly the same as traditional face-to-face classes.

"The biggest surprise is a lot of students say, 'Oh, I'll just take it online, that'll be easy," she explains. "But as time passes, they realize it's not easy, it's not easier. It's supposed to be the same content [as a face to face class, and depending on your learning style, it may be more difficult for you to take it online."

Having taught online, Mattson admits that there is the loss of human touch.

"I taught for a couple of years online, I missed the interaction," she says. "Not that there wasn't interaction, but I missed seeing faces in front of me."