CFHE12 Current and Future/State of Higher Education

CFHE12 MOOC is using Desire2Learn. Since UMUC recently announced that they are going with Desire2Learn, I'm glad to get an opportunity to experience this LMS as a student. I tried to log on right after getting the first newsletter. No luck! The log on procedure needed some tweaking. While that was annoying, I understand that these things happen. Online courses: You are going to put up with at least a little bit of technology pain. (Contrast this with driving to campus which is problem-free, right? No! They forgot to give us adjuncts the new faculty parking lot code at the beginning of the semester. Parking nightmare!) I had my own confusions getting used to D2L. Barry Dahl explained how to see many posts at once in the discussion forums by changing to "reading style". That helped! Initially I wasn't sure who Mark Read was - but I'm slowly getting the hang of it. Did I look for help screens? No! I behaved just like most of my students.
One of the nice things about the discussion forums in D2L: I did a search for "librarian" in the Introductions forum and found all the librarians I had listed as I read through the introductions. Perhaps we should all be trained to use keywords and tags in our discussion postings as a matter of course. "Imagine that someone is trying to find material on the topic of your post. Will they find yours?"

Whether it's a MOOC or not, my little, fleeting problems with D2L made me think about some micro-level aspects of online vs face-to-face courses:

Online courses: Course syllabi and instructions for assignments can be confusing. One course I teach asks students to list "discipline." Some students are asking for clarification. Perhaps we should just ask them to list "your major"? (It's a grad course.) (P.S. I ask students to list the last book they read for fun. Many students in my last two courses listed Fifty Shades of Grey. Maybe they are thinking of a different kind of discipline.
Face to face courses: Course syllabi and instructions for assignments can be just as confusing, but it may be easier to ask questions about the instructions in a face-to-face class.

Students may have trouble navigating all the components of an online course. (I do not believe that navigation and use problems are restricted to use of an LMS.)
Most of us have been sitting in classes since the first grade. We know how face-to-face courses work.

Watching a professor deliver a video lecture online can be boring.
Listening to a professor deliver a lecture in class can be boring.

Wading through online threaded discussion forums can be tedious.
Listening to that one student who always hogs airspace in class can be tedious.

Contacting your instructor and/or other students via email, chat, phone, etc. can be a snap in online courses (though the response might not be instantaneous)
Students may be able to avail themselves of faculty office hours and/or stay after class to ask questions.

Students taking online courses may plagiarize and cheat on exams.
Students taking f2f courses may plagiarize and cheat on exams.

Students may complete an online course and yet not have a true, deep understanding of the content.
Students may complete an online course and yet not have a true, deep understanding of the content.