Given the current campus infrastructure, personal knowledge tools, and the availability of digital content such as course cartridges, online cyber problems, and test banks, a recommended planning number today for experienced faculty is 10 hours per hour of instruction.

Use the same face-to-face course syllabus

<em>Implement </em><em>Course grading that relies heavily on exam assessments</em>

Assignments that lack detailed instructions

<em>Utilize the same </em><em>course materials as used in F2F class</em>

Underestimate the amount of time needed for course transition

<p>In Freeman’s research, it appears that it takes an instructor a little longer to figure out what they want to do with the course pedagogically than to become comfortable with the technology. </p> <p>“That’s one of the biggest things, that the technological learning curve is shorter than the pedagogical learning curve,” Freeman says. “The technology’s not the problem. It’s not what’s making people take longer when they teach.” </p>

Freeman was able to demonstrate that, once past the first online course, there is a significant reduction of instructor time. This leads him to believe that much of the complaint of excessive time consumption probably comes from the first-time experience.

Freeman’s data doesn’t challenge the assumption that it takes longer to develop an online course than a face-to-face course. What he has established is that the teaching, as well as the development, become less time consuming, and that that change can come as early as the second or third time out.

In this new context, by comparison, anybody who writes anything, whether it’s an individual or a team, is now exposed in the commons. Everybody is required to review three deliverables other than their own and rank and review them. That’s a little foreign, and there’s a fair amount of pushback on that. People say, “What do you mean, other people can see my stuff?” And I say, “Well, that’s how peer learning works.”

<p>The motive in this kind of social context is altruism. It’s to help others. By contrast, the motive in a business context is all about profit.</p> <p>Enterprise behavior is different. You can’t take the same social technologies and plop them into a profit-making context and expect that people will immediately engage. The question is, once the underlying motivation shifts from purpose to profit, will the motivation to engage persist?</p>

But through a combination of HD technology, interface design, and careful attention to room geometry, these telepresence systems are on the verge of erasing the physical and psychological distance between participants in online collaboration and learning.