You’ve already decided that you’re ready to author online and you have your content organized. Now it’s time to face the ultimate challenge in online learning – making it interactive!
Interaction in online courses is a two-edged sword. On one hand you want students to participate. This enhances their learning by letting them question and discuss issues in the course. On the other hand, as the instructor, you need to decide the level of interaction you want to have with each student – and build your courses accordingly.
As an illustration, let me relate a poor choice I made in a course I wrote several years ago. Because I wanted everyone involved, I required that each student post at least one message per week to the discussion group. In addition, I required that they respond to two other messages. Simple? Yes. But because I had decided that my level of involvement was to respond to every posting, I was faced with 3 messages for every student every week – and this was only the minimum requirement! I soon found myself bogged down in responding to an overwhelming number of messages.
To decide on your level of involvement, let’s look at 5 levels of interactions you can provide.
1. Respond to every email. At this level of interaction, you are reading and responding to every email or discussion sent. Beware. While this may be effective at the beginning of a discussion when there is little interaction, you’ll soon be overwhelmed just responding to and encouraging students.
2. Respond to every nth email. This is a more rational view. Here you can decide to pick every 5th posting and respond to it. The danger is that you’ll miss a student’s best posting or that you’ll miss an important question.
3. Respond to 1 message per student per week. You can set the expectation that you’ll welcome questions from everyone, but that you’ll only guarantee a response to one per week. That will put the burden of composing an effective message on the student’s shoulders, rather than just jotting off a quick question every time they think of it.
4. Post provocative questions. This is a great way to get a discussion started. If you choose this route, you may choose not to participate in the discussion yourself – but instead, just summarize it at the end – or not.
5. Employ help. This may be a Teaching Assistant, a mentor, students who have taken the course in the past, etc. You may also choose to separate the types of correspondence – for example, one person may cover technical questions, while another handles course mechanics and you take the content questions.
Now that you’ve decided on your level of involvement, it’s time to design the exercises. Recognize that almost any type of exercise you use in face-to-face training has an online counterpart. So be creative – and try your ideas. You can even ask your fellow instructors for help by saying “In an instructor-led course we would do such-and-such for this lesson. What would you suggest we use to replicate that learning online?”
Keep in mind that the format of the course you are creating will help determine the appropriateness of an interactive exercise. For example, if you have a rolling enrollment, self-paced course where students sign up and work through the materials at their own pace, it may be difficult to assign them team activities.
To get you started here are some ideas for interactive exercises. These cover a variety of levels of interaction, so choose your favorites.
Polls and surveys – ask a series of questions, then summarize the results for the participants. This can be done with a survey tool or you can use a multiple choice exam. Poll early and often. Your first poll might be the type of computer participants use, how they connect to the Internet, and their level of expertise in computer skills. This provides good feedback to you and gives them a profile of the “average” student.
Go and do – give students an assignment to do offline. Then ask them to come back and use one of the other techniques (reflection, chat, summaries) to report on their activities.
Read and react – give students an article, a series of websites, or other assignment. Then ask them to write a short reaction paper based on their readings.
Reflection – ask each student to use their personal note space to reflect on reading/group discussions.
3-word summary – ask each student to summarize their thoughts in 3 words in the discussion group. Others can ask for clarification.
Teams – use teams to create small discussion groups. Then ask one person from each team to summarize the discussion in the larger discussion area.
Office hours – use a chat to hold weekly office hours. Just tell everyone when you’ll be “in”, then wait for the questions. As an alternative you may decide to offer a chat time to a smaller group or team of students – either to encourage more interaction or to handle what would have been an overwhelming amount of interaction.
Expert panel – invite one or more experts to participate in a live event such as a video or audio conference. Take questions from the audience. Then continue the discussion with the discussion group. If possible, invite the experts to participate in the discussion.
You will continue to discover new interactive exercises that you use with your courses. For a full course on the topic, send an email to elearning@TechTamers.com

The University of Southampton, the largest higher education institution in south- eastern UK, has flagged off a three year, full- time maritime law programme called LLB Maritime. The university, which has over 17,000 undergraduate and 7,000 postgraduate students, has plenty of maritime law expertise, but till now it has benefited mainly postgraduate students.

One of the Professors in head of the School of Law, University of Southampton, said at a media briefing in the Capital, When local and international students expressed their desire to specialise in marine law while pursuing their undergraduate degree, we decided to offer a qualifying law degree to enable students to attend maritime law classes in the final year. An exposure to maritime law at the undergraduate level will enhance the employability of students.

In the first two years, the course will focus on the core LLB programme – contract, criminal and constitutional law and legal systems and reasoning in the first year, and law of torts, land law, equity and trusts, and European Union law in the second year. In the final year of the LLB Maritime programme, the students will be asked to settle for three options from a list consisting of admiralty law; carriage of goods by sea, commercial conflicts of law and international litigation, and commercial sales and public international law. They’ll also be required to choose an additional subject from the standard LLB options.

Apart from taking these papers, students will be required to write a 10,000-word dissertation on a maritime law- related subject as part of their compulsory legal research and writing course. Entry to this course will be based on the student’s academic references, a strong personal statement and a good academic record. The tuition fees for international applicants entering the university in the 2011- 12 academic year will add up to 10,820. As this is a qualifying law degree programme, it is suitable not only for those who would like a career in the legal profession, but also for those who wish to pursue careers in industry, shipping or commerce. Check the list of other courses, which is offered by University of Southampton, UK.

List of Courses at University of Southampton

Agriculture and related subjects
Applied and Pure Sciences
Architecture, Building and Planning
Business and Administrative Studies
Computer and Mathematical Science
Creative Arts and Design
Education and training
Engineering and Technology
English language (EFL)