To me, any kind of learning is about the interactivity that you are able to integrate into it. In traditional classrooms, there is a very strong teacher-student level of interaction and in the more modern face-to-face classrooms which follow the constructivist approach, the level of student-student interaction is high, along with continuing to have a great deal of teacher-student contact time. Although, in my mind, the level of student interaction with the content is not that great.
Because of the reduced role of teacher or student presence in a self-paced classroom, we need to find a way to increase interaction, but how can we do that? One way is to increase the interactivity of the material. Now, this doesn't mean that you need to go out and create the flashiest of flash apps, but it does mean that you need to 'chunk' your material and intersperse it with reflection questions, small quizzes and include some types of multi-media, whether it's youtube videos or .jpg images, and include many others. There will still be some types of traditional learning in the form of readings etc., but for the most part, students will increase their level of interaction with the material by taking it in in a different fashion than in days past. Whereas before they were listening to lengthy lectures, now they will be answering questions on their own and working content in an entirely new way, but on their own and creating their own meaning through that.
Now, self-paced learning doesn't need to completely erase all form of teacher-student and student-student interaction. Modern technology has helped us connect with peers and instructors in new and exciting ways with social media. There are many ways to work together, whether they are through private discussion forums on an LMS or over publicly available platforms such as twitter and facebook. Having this kind of network allows you to pose questions at large and get feedback or you can search for questions that have been posed by others in your situation and see how it was handled in the past and you can decide whether it would be relevant to your or not.
So, with a title like the one I provided, I'll bet you came here looking for a definite
answer, but you won't get that here. It really depends on what the
learning outcomes are for the course and who the audience is. Different
strokes for different folks is one way to put it.
Is any one particular way you like to interact with your self-paced online courses? Do you find most courses you do boring and have some ideas for how to jazz them up a little? Let me know in the comments section.
