Day 15 - Putting the Human in eLearning #edcMOOC

The first week 3 video, Toyota GT86, was about a new model of Toyota which literally breaks/drives out of the boring, emotionless, muted colored, digital world--through a glass enclosure dome to the vibrantly colored real world where everything is exciting and desirable.  

Compare this to eLearning. Do our students want a boring, emotionless, muted colored, text-based course or would they rather "break through" to a vibrantly colored learning environment which includes audio and video interactions with their teacher and classmates? In Steve Kolowich's article, The Human Element, he suggests that student retention and success rates can be improved by professors using video and audio of themselves to teach and interact with their online students.  The article goes on to say, 

"For Hersh, engagement goes hand-in-hand with audio-visual communication. The more that exchanges occurring within an online learning environment resemble those that occur in classrooms, he says, the more that students will feel connected to their professors and classmates, and the more likely they will be to stay in a program."

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/29/lms#ixzz2lXD92xoE 
Inside Higher Ed

My personal experience leads me to agree.  In my own online Business Management course, I simulate my face-to-face classroom in several ways, but my favorite example is to use VoiceThread (www.voicethread.com) in place of the text based discussion board several times during the semester.  I receive consistent student feedback which states that seeing and hearing their fellow students' comments makes it feel "more like a classroom," and they like it because it adds variety to their online experience.  

I believe as we increase human interaction in eLearning, we are better able to reach the human on the other end of the digital chalk board and bring color to their educational world.