I have been teaching online classes full time for more than six years now. I taught a lot of different courses, with various Institutions, most of them around the topic of Intercultural studies. I have also developed a handful of courses and got to teach them multiple times. Teaching a course you developed yourself is a unique experience. Seeing how students respond to the content, the workload and overall structure of the class is a unique experience.
When you teach online, you can teach all year long, and that is what I have done for the past seven years. The only break I have is three weeks in July. Every day, every weekend, every month, eleven months out of the year. I had thousands of students in my classes from around the world. Every new class I teach brings with it new perspectives and insights. I want to share with you some of these insights and some things I have learned from teaching online. These thoughts are in no order, just the one that came to mind during a very long flight (what else is there to do during long flights):
I am a firm believer that everyone should consider taking online classes but my experience for the past few years showed me that some students don’t have what it takes to succeed in an online environment.