Article Summary Read-Only Participants: a Case for Student Communication in Online Classes"

Article Summary

Many people find that with growing demands in their career fields and having families, they are deterred from returning to a traditional college or university for an advanced degree. Online degrees allow people to work on a degree in their own time without changing their work and family schedules. It takes a disciplined person to meet the requirements to stay enrolled. They still have to participate in discussions, complete assignments on time, and communicate with their peers and instructors. Participation is very important, because the students are not face to face with each other. They still have to be accountable for the information and prove that they understand the content. When participating, they have to take into account proper online etiquette and communication. Many times communication can get misconstrued, because individuals are swapping ideas and must communicate through writing. Students must think about the way their messages will appear to others.

The article, "Read-Only Participants: A Case for Student Communication in Online Classes," was written by Nagel, Blignaut, and Cronje. It discusses online etiquette and communication in an online Master's program at the University of Pretoria. It describes the kinds of online students and the ways to make a successful online experience by studying students enrolled in a course. A read-only student is a student who logs in and is there to read only and not necessarily participate. The article gives numerous propositions to avoid becoming one of these students. They include communicate the required number of online classroom postings; encourage submission of high quality, thoughtful postings, grade discussions and give formative feedback; award individual grades for group projects and rotate members of groups; augment facilitator communication with Internet-independent media to convey important information (p. 1.)

To be a successful online student a person has to be present in the...