Marjorie Thrall Moller

The key to a successful student is quite often based on how well the student and the instructor communicate with each other on the course’s many topics. Students may be afraid to ask questions and faculty may not always have the time for one-on-one communication. By the creation of the internet emails, chat sessions, and instant messaging became a part of the classroom. The issue of students not talking enough with the instructor has greatly been improved. Students now also seem less intimated to ask questions and request for more help. In the ground classroom, many times students are worried what other students would think of them if they asked “too many” questions. Now with other students “not looking”, the student tends to ask more questions of the instructor.

Another benefit are programs similar to MyMathLab, which gives the students immediate feedback on problems that they are working, plus the option of being given a new problem to try immediately. In addition, in online courses and in ground classes connected to a program like MyMathLab, students can regularly check their course grade for the class and see their grades on individual assignments. This lets the student immediately know how she or he is progressing in the course.

In my teaching experiences, I have observed how now the instructor quite often learns more about the student’s private life and how the student’s life is affecting their academic studies. I have seen how the amount the instructor knows of the student’s personal issues has grown since the add-on of technology to the classroom delivery. The instructor can then work with the student so that the student can still juggle their personal life and their academic studies. I have also found that by enabling the students to watch a whiteboard helps the student who is either a visual learner, an auditory learner, or a kinesthetic learner. The student not only can watch the problems worked out and hear the instructor’s explanations, but now the student can actually write on the instructor’s whiteboard to demonstrate his or her comprehension of the topic.

In my personal observations, the addition of technology both in the ground classroom and in the online classroom has been a large plus towards teaching the whole student and coming across to the students as a caring instructor. The communication between instructor and student can now be up to 7 days a week and many hours of the day and night. The response back to the student can now be so much quicker than it used to be. The student is not waiting for the instructor to return to the instructor’s physical office. The student’s response is as close as the computer is to the instructor and student.