Getting and giving help

From my experience of teaching at UPOU, I have come to realize that there is a bit of a paradox involved in succeeding in a massive, online, distance, and e-learning (or MODeL, as we sometimes say at UPOU) mode. On the one hand, MODeL is ideal for people who have specific, individual needs and can learn independently and with little supervision. On the other hand, because of the sheer number of students that are sometimes enrolled in a single class, your teachers and tutors will not be able to respond to all your ideas, questions, and concerns. For instance, I once taught a course with over 250 students in it; if every student in that course sent me one email each week, and if takes me three minutes on average to respond to each email, I would be spending twelve and half hours a week just responding to emails. That's equivalent to spending 8:00 am to 8:30 pm, without a single break, once a week just answering emails, and that's just for one class! On average, I get about 150 emails a day.

However, one of the things that makes learning at UPOU work is when you help your fellow students. For instance, perhaps you come across a classmate asking on a discussion forum on how to open a password-protected PDF file. However, you know the password because the FIC had already previously posted it. Can you guess which of the four options listed below I would recommend you do?

1. Ignore your classmate's question
2. Email them the password
3. Post the password on the discussion forum thread where your classmate asked the question
4. Post the link to the page where the FIC had listed the password on the discussion forum thread where your classmate asked the question

If you guessed option 4, you would be correct! In fact, the answers I gave here were listed in order of increasing preference. Option 4 is the best for two reasons: first, other members of the class can benefit from the answer you give; second, you are helping the asker of the question develop knowledge about how to seek out answers to their questions on their own. As that hoary saying goes, "Give a person a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime." Telling your classmate where to find the answer is better than telling them what the answer itself is.

Of course, there are limits to how much help you can actually give before you run the danger of academic dishonesty! I once taught a class where one student shared the answer to an assignment to all his classmates, who then copied his solution. Sure, they tried to change their own answers a bit, tried to hide the fact that they copied from each other. But it was easy to see through the deception, and as a result I failed the entire class.

Another way you can give help is to report errors in the course to the FIC, such as broken links or glaringly inaccurate content. This will help improve everyone's experience of the course.

Please see the page on communicating with me.