If it weren’t for close Italian family ties, Assistant Professor Anthony Trippe may not have come to the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) to initiate several online technical programming courses for the Computer Engineering Technology Department and RIT’s Online Learning Program. Two years ago, Trippe, who is a native of Western New York and an RIT alumni, was living in San Diego, CA. He had been there for 21 years, teaching as an adjunct professor at various colleges in Southern California, including teaching online for the University of Phoenix (UOP) in San Diego, as well as working as an engineering professional for several high-tech firms.

It was also two years ago that Trippe made the trek back to Rochester, because his son, coincidentally, landed a job in Rochester. "Our son, the unfeeling brute, took our grand children with him," Trippe says jokingly. "There we were, my wife and I, sitting in San Diego eating a dish of spaghetti alone, which is no fun. I said I think I’ll send out a couple of resumes and see what happens." Only a few weeks later he got a call from SUNY Geneseo, where he wound up teaching statistics and programming.

The transition from West Coast to East Coast happened over one quick weekend. "On a Friday night I did my last class at University of Phoenix, and on Monday morning I was in a classroom at Geneseo," he says.

One year later, Trippe ended up taking a position at RIT. His background in online teaching, learned through an extensive faculty training program at UOP, as well as his four years of hands-on online teaching, lends itself well to RIT’s Online Learning Program. He’s currently teaching one Introduction to Programming course online and is slated to teach an Intermediate Programming course online next quarter.

Trippe’s online teaching style and philosophy centers around vigorously controlling and monitoring his class and getting to know his students well. "I can control the rate of student learning better in the online environment than I can in the classroom environment," he says. "There’s a lot more interaction between me and each student in the online environment. I get to know the individual students much better than I do in the classroom."

For starters, all of Trippe’s online students are required to submit an autobiography, which covers their educational background, where they live, what kind of job they hold, and more. "I also want to know about their likes and dislikes in learning," says Trippe. "Then I give them the option of telling me anything about their personal life. Are they single, married, do they have any hobbies? Then I record notes from these autobiographies on a grade sheet that I make up for each student."

The grade sheet has all the class assignments listed and the class point system for grading. As Trippe regularly fills out the grade sheet when a student turn in his or her assignments, he continues to add notes to this student’s personal profile. "By about the second week of the course I have enough information on this sheet that I know the student pretty well," he says.

The grade sheet is the record-keeping baseline for Trippe’s highly organized online classes, where students know "exactly how many assignments they are required to do and how many points there are for each assignments," he says. For example, 30 percent of a grade is dependent upon the number of "significant" messages a student posts in the threaded discussions area. "A significant message is at least 300 words and has to be related to a course topic. That can’t just post something that says ‘yes I agree, or ‘this is interesting.’" To get the full 30 percent, students must post three significant messages each week for 10 weeks. "I give a feedback message to each student at the end of the week," adds Trippe. "I encourage them to interface with each other and share experiences."

Trippe claims that every class usually has what he calls "backyard buddies." These are students who typically don’t participate frequently in class discussions. "They would not say anything if I threw a rock at them," jokes Trippe. "So, in the first two weeks of class, I feel it is an important part of my job to send them a message and get them engaged. I’ll say what are you doing out there, and what do you think of what so and so (another student) said?"

Students also have weekly reading (from the text book and his lectures) and point-based homework assignments. Trippe says he corrects and offers feedback on all assignments, and provides a running total of each students’ overall points typically within two days from the end of each week.

Some very important teaching success-factors in an online class, according to Trippe, include:

1. Provide students with relevant, quick and frequent feedback.

    2.   Get to know your students.

3. Engage students in conversations and encourage student-to-student conversations.
   
4. Clearly define what the requirements are to get a good grade.
   
5. Lay out your class in modular form.
   
6. Make sure you have an excellent text book.
   
7. Supplement the text book with lectures that don’t simply repeat what’s in the text book.

"I spend a lot of time preparing my lectures and setting up a new course," says Trippe. "I refuse to just regurgitate what’s in the book. I force myself to supplement what’s in the book."

Trippe also does not believe in utilizing multimedia in his online classes. There are no videotaped lectures or streaming media in his online classes. "I’m sure you can make that stuff work, but I don’t like to spend the first two weeks trying to teach students how to use the technology," he says. "I’m more concerned with getting down to learning the subject material."

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