Can I take an internet-based course from anywhere?
Our internet-based courses are hosted at ODU's regional Higher Education
Centers and Teletechnet
sites, which can be found
throughout
the state of Virginia and at many locations
outside the state. Although the internet would, in theory,
allow us to provide our courses to students anywhere in the world,
associating the courses with existing ODU sites allows our
students access to laboratory and library facilities, televised
classrooms, and the on-site Teletechnet staff.
Important: You must attend any televised sessions, tests,
etc., at the site at which you are registered. Furthermore, many distance
sites expect you to speak with the on-site staff before
registering. If you register at some sites but are not known to the
staff there, they may administratively drop you from the course. (And
if the course at the proper site for you has filled up, you might not
be able to get back in!)
I'm a Norfolk student.
Can I take this internet-based course?
As a general rule, yes. Our internet-based courses will usually
have a section sited in Norfolk. Please be aware, however, that your
classmates are scattered around the country, and that you will
therefore be required to follow the same rules and procedures as more
distant students. (For example, if the instructor has a policy that
assignments should all be turned in electronically, then handing
physical sheets of paper directly to the isntructor may be frowned
upon, as it requires your submissions to be handled
separately and differently from everyone else's.
Why are enrollments capped in
CS Teletechnet courses? Why are the caps at my site so small?
When we offer a regular on-campus course, enrollment is
automatically limited by physical factors such as classroom size and
by our ownestimates of how many students can be supported by a
single instructor before the quality of instruction begins to degrade.
Distance courses, expecially web-based courses, are even more sensitive
than conventional courses to the instructor's ability to respond promptly to
individual student's questions and problems. A web-based course may
be offered to more than 30 different sites. Obviously, if each site
were to register as many students as go into a normal on-campus
class, the instructor's ability to respond to individual students would be
drastically reduced.
To preserve the quality of instruction in web-based courses, the CS
Dept. has adopted the simple guideline of limiting distance course
enrollments to the same limits that we would impose on an on-campus
course. To do otherwise would, we believe, compromise the
educational experience offered to the distance
students. Furthermore, to allow students at each site equal access to
our offerings, we place caps on each site's section enrollment so that
no one site can monopolize the course during the early enrollment
period. (Not all sites conduct registration at the same time, so a
simple first-come, first-served policy is not considered
reasonable.)
As the registration period progresses, adjustments may be made in
these caps as it becomes clear that demand for the course is higher at
some sites than at others. If the toal demand for a course at all
sites exceeds the overall enrollment cap, we look into alternatives
such as finding additional instructors or additional resources to
support a higher enrollment load, but this may not be possible
(particularly if the situation does not become apparent until late in
the scheduling and enrollment process).
I want to enroll in
a CS teletechnet course but the section is full. What do I
do?
First, if you are a Norfolk student or a student at one of the ODU
Higher Education Centers in the Hampton Roads area, and if it is still
the first two weeks of pre-registration, just wait. Enrollment caps
at these sites start small (to give other sites some opportunity to
register for the course) but are relaxed after the first two weeks of
pre-registration.
After those first two weeks, let your advisor know that you are
trying to get into the course. For Norfolk and Higher Ed. Center
students, contact the CS Dept advisors. Students at more distant sites
should contact the Teletechnet site manager. We try to respond to
enrollment pressures as well as we can (there's no incentive for us to
turn students away!) but we need to learn from the advisors which
sections are in the most demand.
Do internet-based courses have "classes"?
When do they meet? Why does it say "TBA" in the
schedule book?
Most Internet-based courses have some form of class meeting. CS
instructors have been encouraged to seek an appropriate balance of
"asynchronous", self-paced individual activities with
"synchronous" meetings of instructors with students. Some
courses will meet every week for the same number of hours as a
conventional lecture-style course. Others may meet only a few times
over the entire semester. A few do not meet at all. Consult the
individual course descriptions to see what is planned for each
course.
How do these courses "meet" at all? Most courses
meet via Teletechnet
satellite TV classrooms, located at the ODU Higher Education Center or Teletechnet site where the student has registered.
Students may also
have the option of registering for a "streaming video" section of the course, in which case they may attend via any nigh-bandwidth internet
connection.
The dates and times for these meetings are, unfortunately,
often not known at registration time. Consequently the courses
are listed as "TBA" (To Be Announced). Watch the
individual course description pages for announcements when the
meeting times have been finalized.
But it get's worse. The people
who made the on-line schedule pages and the people who actually
enter the courses into the online system apparently don't agree on
just what the little schedule codes actually mean. So the sections of
our web courses wind up appearing as "televised" or "regular"
classes more often than as "web classes". The only way to tell for
sure is to click on the course title and view the detailed course
description page.
Don't blame us. We only work here.
