The sheer volume of interaction in online courses is one of the most demanding aspects instructors face in Web-based distance education.

Consider the following scenario about a discussion activity designed to promote learner-instructor interaction in a distance course:

Let’s say you have a class of 20 in your online course and you have asked each one of your students to respond to a threaded discussion and to then post responses to at least two other classmate’s responses. You have now given yourself 60 assignments to critique and give feedback above and beyond all the other assignments you may have assigned for the week (You Can Teach Online, 2001, p. 11.28).

Ask experienced distance educators about the instructor’s workload in interactive web-base courses. Likely, you will hear that their distance courses require more time than their face-to-face courses.

Workload issues must be considered when designing interaction activities. An overloaded instructor is less likely to be an effective guide. Consider the benefit of the activity and the costs of the activity. Achieve a balance of providing meaningful interaction activities in web-based courses and maintaining efficient use of instructor time to monitor and manage them.

There are solutions to managing the workload problem when designing interaction activities. Here are a few of the recommended strategies:

• Read selected postings rather than all of them.
• Respond to selected postings rather than all of them.
• Assign students to help with the “work” in the discussions (e.g., moderating, peer evaluations, etc.).
• Team-teach or partner with a graduate student to read and respond to the postings.
• Assign fewer discussion activities, but make instructor responses rich and comprehensive.

There are excellent Web-based communication tools that support learner-instructor interaction and learner-learner interaction in distance education courses and can lessen problems with workload overload. Most Web-based learning management systems (e.g., WebCT, Blackboard, and others) come with a complete array of communication tools to manage discussion groups, chat rooms, and electronic mail. These tools are covered in depth in Destination 7: Developing Web-Based and Video-Based Instruction and Other Technologies.

Learning management systems provide the instructor with tools to track certain student behaviors in the Web-based courses including the level of activity in discussion groups. For example, WebCT tracks the number of discussion postings made by each student and records the number of messages that are accessed for reading. This tracking data is useful for a quick snapshot of student participation but it doesn’t provide any qualitative information about a student’s performance.

Even the best Web-based communication technologies are just tools that facilitate the interaction process. They do not replace the need for careful instructional design and active participation by the instructor in all interaction activities.

The remainder of this destination will focus on interactive strategies, by applying them to specific instructional methods. We'll look at such applications as chat sessions and discussion groups a little later. First, though, let's look at instructional strategies for distance education.

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