Tony Waters began his career in distance education for the money.
In 1996, Waters came to Chico State and taught any sociology course available. He taught his first course over satellite to Japan.
He said he likes distance students because of their diverse life experiences.
Several of his online students have been unable to attend class because of natural disasters.
"Out of 33 students, I've had three students that have been evacuated," Waters said.
One online student is playing professional basketball in France, Waters said. And few are the college-aged students he teaches in Chico. The average age of an online student is 38.
One major difference in teaching online courses is that every test is open book, open instant message, open phone call and open e-mail. So Waters makes hard multiple choice tests with 30 questions scrambled so each students gets 20 questions.
"If they're all over the state or all over the country, I can't control if they're on their cell phones," he said.
He said tests are supposed to get students to learn, not to hit them over the head.
Online tests should find out what a student knows if they have done the reading and have the book in front of them.
"That's a different test than if the student has done the reading and doesn't have the book in front of them," he said.
He said some on-campus students enrolled in the class can get behind because they choose not to attend class figuring they will just watch the class online.
But few ever do.
"A lot of them float away," he said.
Many on-campus students don't like the online classes because they have to worry about pushing a green button and talking into a microphone every time they have a question, Waters said.
"They worry about not just the eyes in front of them, but a whole 'nother set of eyes they can't see," he said.
He said when online students ask questions, they type in the chat room, and a student assistant will draw attention to the questions.
While some say online students do better than on-campus students, Waters disagrees.
He said that regardless of if the student attends in the classroom or online, the number of times a student goes to the Web CT page, the higher the student's grade will be.
But online students do tend to be very determined.
"Being online by yourself is tough," Waters said. "You have to be really persistent and really want it."
Brea Jones can be reached at:
bjones6@mail.csuchico.edu
Other stories in this series:
Learning technology to learn sociology
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