Teaching Writing Online with Laulima

I teach writing at Leeward Community College in Hawaii and have been doing so since 1990. In 2009, I took my first stab at teaching a writing class online and I'm using the course management system for the University of Hawaii called Laulima.

There are many more experienced teachers than I, but perhaps the experiences of a neophyte will be beneficial to other neophytes and perhaps even some experienced teachers.

I developed an interest in using Laulima after helping my wife with some online courses she's taken via Laulima. While helping my wife register for courses, I noticed that online classes are in high demand, typically being filled before sections of "traditional" classes. One of the sister colleges of LCC is Kapiolani Community College which has reported a fill rate of 96% for its online classes. Impressive. After taking all this in, I had visions of someday teaching my entire course load online. A handful of my colleagues at LCC are doing just that, and with gas prices in Hawaii heading yet again for outer orbit, maybe working from home won't be such a bad thing. If total online teaching does come to pass, I'm just wondering if the bulk of my days will be spent parked in front of a computer. We'll see.

Regarding my first plunge into online course delivery, I'm currently (summer 2009) teaching English 100 (aka freshmen comp) to section of 13 students. I have to admit that I borrowed ideas and assignments from one of my LCC colleagues Janet Kay Porter, who was generous enough to let me hang out in one of her online Eng 100 classes.

Otherwise, I've gone through a trial and error process with Laulima, opting not (at least not yet) to seek the help of campus resource folks who would be glad to help me.

What I've learned so far...

1. Students are generally very tech savvy. There have been very few tech issues/questions from students. In fact, I suspect that most of them are more tech savvy than I am.
2. Laulima is pretty intuitive. I've been able to construct tests, figure out the grade book and assignment functions with not too much difficulty.
3. Question pools for tests/exams/questions are available for any class I teach. What that means is I can use some/all of the questions from a pool of questions for different classes. For instance, let's say I have a pool of test questions about analyzing online sources that I use for my Eng 100 class. If I were to teach a higher level class like Eng 215, I could use some/all of those same questions for a test.
4. Discussion boards and chat rooms for peer collaboration on essay drafts are much more fruitful than F2F peer groups.
5. Teaching online takes time. Right now, I'm putting in more time into my online class than I would with the same class taught F2F. As time goes on and I develop more material and a better understanding of the system, I think the time spent will decrease.
6. I'm going to teach more courses online in the future.