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Interview with: J. Mark Danley Name: J. Mark Danley Division: Math, Science and Engineering What Courses do you teach online?
In addition to your online courses, have you used distance learning to enhance your face-to-face courses? I use WebCT to enhance all my other courses in introductory biology, and Majors Anatomy & Physiology lecture and labs.
What do you like to do when you’re not teaching? (Hobbies)
I also enjoy spending time with my partner and our 15-year-old son. We plan activities together whenever we are all available, which can be difficult when dealing with our son’s basketball practice or the restoration work he’s doing on his car.
Also, I used to be a professional actor (about 10 years ago) so I enjoy working in theatre every once in a while. (It also explains why I do so much on-camera work for DL!) Watching TV shows or movies filmed in New York or Philadelphia becomes an adventure as I try to spot a lot of my old friends.
As an online instructor, what role do you see distance learning playing in the future education of students?
I can see distance learning growing as a means of course delivery, especially in the areas of the country where local access to colleges may be difficult, or students are unavailable to make traditional class times. The one drawback, though, is that high-speed internet access is almost a necessity, especially when learning Biology, which can be very image-intensive.
In the CNM Biology Department, we’ve made a concerted effort to develop almost every lecture course as a DL course as well. As you can well imagine, this can be quite a difficult task. Biology needs to be discussed at so many different levels, from the molecular to the whole organism. At times, DL allows us to go a little more in depth than we might in the regular lecture time period. Also, depending upon how the course is delivered, we can produce a lecture in 10-20 minute portions that many students find easier to follow. Currently we offer nine different DL classes (BIO 110, 111, 112L, 123, 124L, 136, 139L, 239 and BIO241 as a hybrid), with two more in development (BIO237 and 238). Three of those nine classes are lab courses that have required a little more work to develop materials that might give students more of a hands-on experience. We will be evaluating the effectiveness of the online labs over the next year.
We are very fortunate here at CNM in that we have access to so much incredible technology to help us with course delivery. WebCT is a great delivery tool for the students, though it is a bit clunky to set up. The folks in Media Production, headed by Peter Hurley, helped us to use their Mediasite framework for on-camera lectures and Powerpoints. Media Productions has also helped us develop virtual lab activities and videos that our students use to review basic topics such as metrics, scientific notation and use of the microscope.
The ability to use three different cameras became invaluable in my BIO139L course to discuss anatomic structures and allowing me to show organs in extreme close-ups which would be almost impossible in the standard lecture. In a way my DL students benefit a little more from access to my own Mediasite presentations than if I gave a standard lecture in the live lab. In fact, I refer my regular lab sections to those same videos to review the material after their regular class meeting.
If you could change one thing about your online courses, what would it be and why?
There isn’t much I would change at this point, though I know that I will likely need to update some of my Mediasite work. I am anxious to try working on the new upgrade of WebCT as I understand it is a little easier for faculty to use.
Knowing what you now know about online instruction, what advice would you give to brand new instructors?
First, I would let the newbie know that development of the WebCT shell takes a lot of time, care and revision. It will not be perfect on the first try. The Online Instructor Certification course is extremely beneficial in helping you get to know the technical piccadillos of WebCT, making the development much easier.
Secondly, the instructor needs to be prepared to spend slightly more time with the online class than with the regular class. Even after the first time the course is delivered, there will always be new things to add, bad things to take away, new links to find and new things to write. Online office time needs to be established so the DL students can have some real-time discussions, and that can take some time, especially as CNM requires us to do them on campus, while most students have more availability in the evenings.
Finally, make sure that students attend your orientation at the beginning of the semester! Students may state that they have taken DL courses before, but they really need to have that initial face-to-face time with the instructor. If you have a student who is out of state, then they should contact you by phone. Students who need to make arrangements to take exams off-campus need to find proctors in a timely fashion. Every course has special instructions, and some students don’t seem to heed them unless they are informed in person.
Knowing what you now know about online instruction, what advise would you give other “seasoned” online instructors?
I’d rather ask advice FROM them! In fact, I still do. Two other instructors in Biology, Jim Swan and Shawn Wright, pioneered many of the things I incorporated into my class. Jim started our DL classes with BIO111, Environmental Biology, and Shawn developed the DL version of BIO239, Microbiology. Shawn was the first instructor in Biology to use Mediasite and that’s how I started using it.
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