Voice Technologies: Raising the Level of Interaction in Online Courses

As professors attempt to create a new paradigm for teaching and learning by blending pedagogy with technology in an online course, they have many choices to make. It is easy to become overly inventive with the appearance and format of a course; to attempt to offer the perfect syllabus studded with extensive goals, objective, directives and activities; to provide students with innumerable links to enable them to travel the Information Superhighway with speed and ease; and to integrate their best lectures and assume that they have provided the perfect climate for learning. However, having accomplished all these things—and they are not bad things—one has to consider the question "Where does the real teaching and learning take place in an online course?" How do we assure ourselves that somewhere in our online course we will be able to provide a way of inculcating important intellectual skills and stimulating active critical thinking along with the mastering of the required course material? Somewhere professors must replicate that spark that takes place in the classroom—that moment of intellectual curiosity, of complete understanding of concepts, of recognition of fallacy, of the creation of an entirely new angle of vision—is the challenge.