Don't Cross the Ivory Line

As DL adminers, we are privy to the best and worst of online courses. If not careful, we can get lost in our best practices mindset, and start to believe that we are the utmost authority on online course design, online teaching, and everything in between. We start to think that we could save all students from those occasional yucky online courses if every instructor would just develop their course just exactly like we would. The problem? Well, there's just oodles of them. First of all, it's just not our place to cross that ivory line and get into the business of telling faculty how to teach. Train them, lead them, inspire them - yes; but remember that they are the true artists who must be allowed to sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly create their own masterpieces. I'm also one who, in spite of the scalability it may provide, who is not in favor of a cookie-cutter approach to online classes. I treasured the geniune and spontaneous character of f2f courses I took long ago, and think we move into dangerous territory when we attempt to rob online courses of the same. Finally, we begin to lose respect when our egos get in the way and we forget that we are administrators in a support role.