Teaching Pre-College Math Online
Pre-College Students
Online Students
Pre-College Online 
Students
Avg. Age 20
Working
Married/Children
First Time College
Academic Challenges
Avg. Age 34
Working
Married/Children
Time Challenges
Some Previous College
5.6 million online students
50% of recent HS grads enroll in pre-college courses 
40 - 60% of new CC students require pre-college courses
Students choose online classes
primarily for convenience
Students withdraw from online classes
mainly because they are overloaded
Good Practices for Instruction
Beginning
Middle
"Why don't you challenge yourself..."
"Effective teaching in developmental education
is one of the most challenging jobs in the 
college teaching profession" - Patricia Smittle, 2003
“The beginning holds the seed of all that is to follow” – I Ching
“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.” -Rumi
"The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy." - John Galsworthy



Make contact early and often
"Require" an in-person orientation
Establish your presence
Check prerequisites and placement scores
Monitor student progress daily
Reach out to stragglers
Reference course procedures 
Establish lines of communication
Continue regular class communication
Maintain your presence
Provide quick and regular feedback
Surprise the good students with special feedback
Update the class content as needed
Provide additional resources as needed
Reach out to struggling students
Make class scheduling adjustments as needed
End
Provide continued support
Maintain or increase communication
Ask for student feedback
Connect with students about next term
Closely monitor students on the grade border
Adjust deadlines as appropriate
Provide guidance per final assessment
Provide closing contact after final deadline
The idea that developmental education
should not be taught online is like saying we should put
down sand bags after the river has flooded. 
Online learning is here to stay and it belongs in the
pre-college world just as much as it belongs in other
parts of education. The only question for us is how
do we, as educators and invested institutions, make
it better?
Teaching Pre-College Math Online by Dr. Donna Gaudet is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Dr. Donna Gaudet is a math instructor at Scottsdale Community College in Scottsdale, Arizona. She specializes in online and hybrid instruction for pre-college students. She has been teaching pre-college students online since 1997 and during that time has taught over 75 classes and 2000+ students. You can reach her at dgaudet.scc@gmail.com, visit her blog at http://drdonagee.wordpress.com or follow her on twitter @donagee
Lamp post photo credit: User wasme, Flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/presley_perswain/5717851938/sizes/m/in/photostream/