What online classes are like.

So on-line classes are a little different. You never get to interact with the other students (not that I was ever one for hanging with the classmates), but your sense of the teacher is a little limited too. The trade off is the flexability in time. I can work on things at my own hours and focus my work on after my kids go to sleep instead of worrying about showing up at a class on time with all my work done.

I think the most interesting thing has been the online chats. When you're in a classroom, whether or not you ever realize it, there's an order to things. Even when you don't raise your hand, people don't tend to interrupt each other. You digest comments and usually one or two people try to dominate the conversation and others hold back from some fear of public speaking or something.

During online chats, someone will ask a question and four different people will frantically type in four different points taking the conversation in four different directions at once. I think the greatest skill in teaching an online class is learing how to moderate an online discussion so that all the good points gets fleshed out a little. You've got to be able to type faster than everyone else. And being a quick thinker probably doesn't hurt.

Maybe younger people who text frequently processes random outbursts better than I do. I'm not sure.

But overall it's been a good experience. Tonight we're workshopping my first chapter in an online chat. I'm wondering if I'll figure out anymore about the piece I'm working on.