Biggest challenges moving from F2F to online.

The challenges faced by students moving from f2f to an online environment vary by student. I find that the biggest factor is not the level of skills in technology, but the students’ sense of adventure and willingness to take risks. Even for those with a sense of adventure, once they move into the online environment, many find it difficult to find and/or adjust to their virtual selves. Success and comfort in the virtual environment requires the ability to develop and project one’s virtual persona. Hopefully, this persona is an authentic extension of the person one is in the physical world.
What are the biggest challenges your students face when transitioning from f2f environment to an online environment?
Last night I had my one f2f meeting with a new class of Advanced Technologies students. After the third announcement that class would be online after this one meeting, one student got a panicked look on her face. I talked with the students about the concept of “self” – of who we are. Are we our bodies? Can we be in the same physical space with someone and have no rapport with them, no connection? Yes – queues at the grocery store or the movies, etc.; waiting rooms at the doctors. It is not until we interact  and extend ourselves in thoughts, and reactions, revelations about our inner being that we share persona.  I learned this when I was in middle school and shared my Beatlemania with pen pals in Germany, England and Japan. There was no internet then – we connected virtually through snail mail, but the concept was the same. We shared our common interests, shared our ideas and ourselves, built bonds -- and never met, although when I read their letters I felt they were in the same room with me. They told me the same.
Developing the online persona is perhaps the most difficult transition from f2f to online, because it means understanding that “you” are not just physical, and that the “you” that generates ideas  and forms relationships and solves problems is an intellectual being who does not have to be bound by physical space. Once a person understands and accepts that reality, the rest is just an adventure.
Kathleen