Post 419: Should teachers be allowed to modify standardized classrooms?

 Should teachers be allowed to modify standardized classrooms?  YES

Many online schools use one standardized classroom for all the sections of one class. For instance, let's say you are a English Composition teacher, you are then given a classroom that already has lessons, forums, assignments, loaded into the online classroom. All you have to do is to facilitate the classroom, grade the assignments, and participate in the forums with the students. Every online teacher receives the same exact ENG 101 classroom. So, Section 01 of ENG 101 has the same exact lessons and assignments as Section 25 ENG 101.

If you are lucky and you get a terrific classroom, then as an online teacher all you have to do is sit back, follow the directions and lead the students through the pre-loaded assignments and directions. No sweat.

However, if the online classroom instructions has mistakes, and you are locked out of the module to fix that mistake, then you are unlucky because then you have to report the mistake to the administrator who is the only one with access to unlock the module to fix the mistake. Or if the online school had the interactive lessons done by a third party vendor and you see mistakes, you are out of luck.

I believe that the online teacher who teaches a standardized classroom should be able to slightly modify the instructions of the lesson, the forums, or the assignment to a) better reflect the personality of the teacher b) add other instructions that work better for the class based on the teacher's previous experience in teaching other classes c) Avoid confusion if the instructions are unclear and confusing to students. Having the forum, lesson, module and assignment instructions locked to the instructor is a BAD idea because then the online teacher is stuck with confusing instructions.

I am currently teaching a forum where students discuss the revision of their rough drafts. The instructions are very broad telling students to simply talk about what revisions they plan to make to their essay. I would like to add further instructions like, students should also be able to post their underlined thesis statements or students should post their rough drafts to the forum for a more interactive peer review forum, but since I am locked out of the instructions, I cannot change the instructions to fit my personality or to improve the discussions.

Currently, in the forum, I constantly post "Why don't you tell us your thesis statement? What is your thesis statement or essay topic? And nobody pays any attention. They just vaguely describe their revision plans and it is hard to understand the context of that student post without the student posting their essay topic or thesis.  

Therefore, schools should allow online teachers who teach the section to be able to modify the lesson based on that teacher's experience and personality to make the class more interactive for both teacher and student. 

Allowing teachers to modify lessons slightly without changing the lesson or class objective increases faculty morale. When an online school I was working for finally allowed faculty to change slightly the lessons in the syllabus or in the classroom, I remember how happy my fellow faculty members were at the time. We considered it a victory over the orders of the administration. Before, we were only allowed to modify the rubrics, but after many complaints about bad instructions that were unclear, finally admin said okay we can modify the lessons and after that faculty morale skyrocketed!