Online students I've dealt with
- Otherwise wonderful online students can sometimes be exasperating for instructors.
- Behaviors of online students that irritate me include being
too wordy, using trite or even coarse language, frequent requests for deadline extensions, and
disappearing from class for long periods of time without so much as a word of explanation.
- Online instructors' gripes about students can often be solved with a little effort on the
student's part, making the lives of both the instructor and student less stressful.
Caricatures of annoying online student behavior
Behaviors like these degrade the learning experience for everyone in online classes.
Presented with apologies to Snow White and her seven dwarfs.
- Busy
Busy always has something going on and is continually asking for deadline
extensions. Her excuses sound legitimate (after all, life can get hectic for everyone), but
classmates wanting to include her in conversations have to look in previous weeks' folders
because she's late doing her own work as well as responding to theirs.
- Oblivious
Oblivious has trouble with homonyms. He also uses sentence fragments far too
frequently. His proofreading isn't all that great. Whenever someone happens to mention it,
Oblivious just laughs it off. He doesn't realize — or, worse, doesn't care — that his
errors weaken the impact of his writing on other people.
- Wordy
Wordy thinks she's supposed to respond to every single post. Even
when she doesn't say much, the time other people take to open and read her messages mounts up.
Wordy occasionally has good ideas, but she writes and writes and writes. It's almost as if she
cannot think without writing.
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- Coarsely
Coarsely seems to think the class is being held in the men's locker room of a high
school gym. Inappropriate allusions creep into his posts. Then, when others protest that his
humor needs cleaning up, he whines that he is the victim.
- Disconnected Dan
Dan has other priorities in life. Days go by, and he's not heard from.
People ask him questions on discussion boards, and he doesn't respond. One gets the impression
that Dan only reads enough posts each week to make everyone think that he is there.
- Trite-ly
Whenever Trite-ly responds to a post you know it's going to be on some insignificant detail. Her
posts have little to do with actual course content. Trite-ly seems to always be in some kind of
very loose association mode.
- End-times Edith
Edith's all-consuming passion is Eschatology (End-times). So she finds certain
signs of the end in everything, even in numerical codes she derives from the letters in the names
of textbook authors. Edith's passion is end-times, and she's not about to let the subject of the
particular course force her to concentrate on something else.
-- Howard Culbertson, hculbert@snu.edu
Acrostic: Being Successful in Online Learning
O - Organized – Keep track of assignments, deadlines, and study materials.
N - Needed discipline – Stay focused and committed to learning.
L - Logical thinker – Approach assignments critically and analytically.
I - Independent – Take responsibility for your learning and stay disciplined.
N - Networking – Engage with classmates and instructors for support.
E - Efficient – Manage time wisely and avoid distractions.
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