It depends. Many potential participants have a misconception about online courses, thinking they will only need to log in to their course once a week, listen to a lecture, do a few activities, and take a quiz, similar to what they experienced in many of their face-to-face courses in college. That is not the case with SSD courses. Our online courses emphasize building relationships, and engaging and interacting – with the instructor, the course content, and with your fellow cohort participants. So unlike many face-to-face courses, participation in online class discussions is not optional or only for those seated in the front row.
Online courses rarely have the same pacing or instructional activities as face-to-face courses. Although synchronous communication tools, such as Zoom web call, may be used in your online courses – thus enabling the sort of real-time interactions students are accustomed to in on-campus courses – text-based asynchronous communication tools (e.g., threaded discussion forums) are still the primary tools used for participant-instructor and participant-participant interaction and communication in online courses. Due to the very nature of these tools (i.e., text-based and asynchronous), online courses have very different pacing and use very different instructional strategies than on-campus courses.